Scenery that occurs: 정정주

Jeong Jeong-ju has long explored the inner and outer dimensions of human perception through architectural models equipped with interior cameras. By treating the light entering these miniature buildings as a metaphor for the external surveillance, Jeong creates works that are both delicate in nuance and stark in aesthetic, combining softness with structural clarity. 

 

In this exhibition, Jeong presents new architectural models based on buildings encountered in everyday life, including the ubiquitous apartment complexes found throughout Seoul. Through these models, he reinterprets the visual landscape that such ordinary structures inscribe upon the city. 

 

Each model houses a small camera inside, transforming the closed architectural space into something more ambiguous. The models, while being observed from the outside by viewers, also return the gaze through their internal lenses. This uncanny exchange of perspectives invites reflection on how we see experience, and occupy everyday space. 

 

The exhibition also features an expanded series of 3D animated works, building upon the artist’s previous experiments with painterly references. These new pieces draw from classical painting, resulting in elegant yet dissonant visual compositions that feel at once familiar and estranged. 

 

Through this exploration of light and vision, Jeong encourages us to reconsider the buildings, illuminations, and exchanges of gaze that shape our daily lives. 

The works I create – often in the form of architectural models – are based on spaces I have personally inhabited or experienced; the living room, and bathroom of my childhood home, or places such as gyms and dormitories that are tied to my own memories. These models aim to recreate the distinct atmosphere and emotional tone each space once held. By carefully arranging fundamental architectural elements such as the size and layout of rooms, the position of windows, and the intensity of light, I seek to capture and reconstruct the aura unique to each environment within a three-dimensional structure.  

What adds a layer of complexity is the presence of a moving camera within these architectural forms. Through this lens, I explore how the aura of a space is visually perceived and understood. The camera becomes a tool to investigate the organic relationship between physical location and perceptual experience.

Because the camera is embedded within the model, viewers can only access the interior space through the eyes of the lens. They may desire to fully comprehend the space, but are physically barriered from entering it. This limitation creates a situation in which one must rely on the camera’s point of view, eventually connecting with it emotionally, to experience a sense of truly being inside the space. 

In this way, the camera in my work can be understood as an extension of the subjective gaze, an expanded eye that mediates both presence and perception.