Seoi Insook Jung
Korean
EDUCATION | CAREER
1985 Graduated in Ehwa Womens University-Majored in Fine Arts
Completed VMD course in Yale Design Academy
Deco Room with a View VMD
Lectured in Gumi University
Member of the Korean Society of Illustraion Research
Artist statement
People often refer to me as a painter, but I would like to call myself a proposer. Such as giving a suggestion to answer the question like,
“What would you want to throw out or to fill in?”
It’s a vague and odd question to ask someone,
but my theme empty jumoni will draw the viewers’ attention to answer the question thoroughly.
I started painting full jumoni, since 3 years ago.
And I progressed my paintings towards emptying the jumoni until I finished the work.
I tried to show the act of emptying by applying the processes such as sandpapering, recoloring, erasing and I kept on repeating the same processes over and over again.
The process is a metaphor of us putting what we should throw away and feeling the relief of what was compressing your chest.
Once we put things aside from our mind,
we are finally allowed to fill our jumoni with new ones with expectation and joy.
I would like to give viewers the feeling of lightness coming from emptying the jumoni, but if you would like to put in something in your own empty jumoni, it’s up to you.
What would you want to throw out or to fill in?
I want to be the proposer who asks simple questions to you through my paintings.
The shape of jumoni does not just mean a Korean bag.
If you ask me why did I paint so many colors on Jumoni, if I wanted to show the act of emptying,
filling the canvas in with colors could seem like the complete opposite of emptying one- self.
But it represents the time we spent on what we are about to throw away,
even the time we wasted, we treasured, all the recollection of memories combined.
EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION (14)
2002
Manila invitational exhibit, Manila Santo Thomas art museum, Philippines
2016
Energy of generating fortune, Gallery Eye, Korea
2018
Overthere Solo Exhition, Tofo House, Korea
Ja Un Jae Gallery Solo Exhibit, Ja Un Jae Gallery, Korea
‘Overthere’ Hi Seoul Art hall, Korea
2019
Wawa Gallery Invitational, Korea
Singapore Global Art Fair Invitational, Singapore
2021
London START Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, UK
2022
Invitation Exhibit, Hyunin Gallery, Jeju-island
etc.
GROUP EXHIBITION(61)
2005
Azerbaijan International Event Innovation Exhibit, Azerbaijan Baku National Gallery, Azerbaijan
2007
Chicago 100 years anniversary Celebration for Immigartion Exhibition, USA
2018
Seoul Art Show 2018, Coex, Korea
2019
LA Art Show, LA Convention Center, USA
Singapore Global Art Fair, Singapore
Kyungnam International Art Fair, Korea
Now&Future Exhibtion, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan
2020
Singapore Art Week, Singapore
2023
Singapore Global Art Fair, Singapore
etc.
Symphony of lines, colors, and shapes | Jung Insook's <Overthere-Jumoni Series>
Along with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, one of the most prestigious abstract expressionism artists from postwar America quoted, "the most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees," adding, "a picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer."
Perhaps that's why there were many people kneeling or crying in front of his work, which was just a painting with various color droplets all over the canvas.
Rothko added that people would have had the same religious experience as he felt when he was painting it.
It is very interesting to have such noble expressions in Jung Insook's work. It is very unlikely for us to receive sympathy from a simple composition between the line, color, and shape seen in the canvas.
However, the situation changes completely when an artist truly takes out everything from the soul and pours it into the canvas.
So people often define artists as "depressed human beings who have lost their normal lives instead of being gifted with special senses."
Yes. The work created by the artist with that exceptional talent is the power and vitality of art. Rothko’s remarks, "what one thinks than of what one sees," are oddly in line with Jung Insook's artistic ideology.
In an interview in 2019, Jung Insook showed her determined will by saying, "I express the echo of my heart with lumps of color. Even in the midst of a crazy silence, sometimes in the midst of loud noises as if the sky was tearing apart, I will unite the water and paint with my arms and represent all of these things in color”.
Jung Insook valued the importance of lines, sides, and colors as crucial tools for her paintings even since her early works.
It reminds us of the Russian constructivism style of paintings, but compared to the fact that constructivism is almost focused on geometric lines and shapes, Jung Insook’s art style is clearly distanced from those.
The artist takes a repetitive method of overlapping brushstrokes.
The lines were added, overlapped, and erased on the canvas based on her emotions and resonations.
As it is phenomenologically approaching with more of an oriental sensibility and spiritual values, it encompasses a philosophical idea of extinction and creation beyond the addition of color.
In other words, it means that the artist's repeating method of creation and extinction becomes an image that is the result of the time that is born into an art.
For that reason, Jung Insook's compositions, textures have structural differences from others’ works, but are rather less organized, yet oriental, and natural.
In particular, the artist’s perspective and interpretation on the space is also interesting.
It is a soft line that divides or occupies space by applying a brush stroke along the infinite emotional line indicated by her mind.
It is the style in which the artist's delicate sensibility and resonance toward the empty space ultimately cover the canvas with a lump of color and intensely seduce us.
The inner echo that leads her style is the sound heard in her ears, and sometimes it seems like a rough invasion of thoughts.
The overlap and interaction of the colors are decoded on the canvas, the harmony dominates the concentration of paint and the speed of the brush strokes makes us more suspicious of the unconsciousness bound by the infinite emotional line.
Perhaps Jung Insook clearly proves with a canvas that she is not interested in anything other than the composition and form of colors like how Mark Rothko was.
It exposes the desire as an oriental painter with an interest in human emotions, such as blankness or emptying, sadness, anguish, tragedy, ecstasy, and naturalness.
What is very fascinating here is that these factors harmonize with colors and shapes, creating multiple Jumoni of resonation in silence and harmony through her work.
This is the case with the harmony of colors, and so is the intersection of shapes.
It is inferred that the space formed by emptying them all are catching our eyes by spitting out tensions.
It is certain that the perfect state of silence and harmony created by the blank spaces after being emptied, is the exceptional talent only the artist Jung Insook has.
The foundation and basis that must be done until one masterpiece is fully painted, are sandpapering, repeated combination of colors and perfect composition, and harmony must be reached.
If the 2017 <Overthere Series> of Jung Insook was to talk about the hope beyond surface,
her 2021 <Overthere Jumoni series> is about the act of putting aside. It’s about the reflection for viewers to take in consideration.
The praise and getting awarded as a featured artist in the Start Artfair 2021 is a small reward for her accumulated time in front of her canvas and respect.
It is nothing more than a tiny gift coming from her endless attempts to create harmony with "straight lines and curves”.
In particular, the outstanding sensibility, thorough touch, and vivid color fields seen in recent works are raising expectations for the future works.
The "OVERTHERE Arirang" series, which was produced for the French Nantes Jazz Festival, the artist elegantly reveals her secret inner emotions with a more natural brush stroke.
Artist Jung Insook, who abstractly unfolds the fields of visual pleasure, pleasant attraction, and contemplation that we have not experienced, proves once again after Mark Rothko that only this harmony of colors and forms on canvas is the best value and beauty.
Kim Chong Geun. (Art critic)