City of Gaze: Jeong Jeong-ju

Interview – Familiar Strangeness, Jeong Jeong-ju’s Urban Experience in Art

Solo Exhibition <City of Gaze>

gallerychosun 

Jeong Jeong-ju: To briefly introduce my work, I construct architectural models of buildings, install a moving camera within their empty interiors, and then present video footage that captures both the interior of the model and the exterior space of the exhibition environment where the work is displayed. In earlier works, the models were based on real places with which I had a personal connection; like the living room of my own home or a shopping mall in Ilsan I passed by daily. In those cases, there was a direct and emotional relationship between myself and the architecture I was representing. But over time, I began working with unfamiliar urban spaces like cities in Japan and China. Those which I had no connections with. As a result, the sense of reality within the models began to fade. My exhibitions until now were about the “City of Gaze”, but the theme for my upcoming solo exhibition at the Kim Chong Yung museum will be “Illusion”. I believe this shift reflects the changes in how I perceive and relate to the spaces I reconstruct. 

Sumi Kang: After hearing what you’ve said, I think it makes sense to start with a basic question. How do you define “city” in your work?

JJ: My first creation about the city as a collective subject was <덕이동 로데오 거리> (2006). When I first visited the area, I immediately thought “I need to recreate this”, and began working on a model. Then, when I was preparing an exhibition in Shanghai, I built <Zendai Plaza> which had been redeveloped as a massive shopping complex. The museum which the exhibition was held in was also a part of Zendai Plaza. It was around that time that my interest in the idea of the city really deepened. Especially after reading a newspaper article in China about so-called “mirage cities”. Apparently these enormous mirages sometimes appear over the sea of China’s western coast. Huge cities rising from the ocean and disappearing within hours. After installing the <Zendai Plaza>, I began to feel that cities, in a way, are like mirages themselves.