Luminous City: 정정주

Luminous City

Jeong-ju Jeong

25 August - 21 September 2023

Jeong-ju Jeong's solo exhibition 《Luminous City》 will be held at gallerychosun, Seoul, from August 24 to September 21, 2023.

The artist uses video, light, and sculpture, to explore fixed architectural space and shifting urban light, emphasising its symbolic role in minimalistic art. Jeong views light as a transcendent image of idea that unveils everyday spaces, while artificial city lights symbolizes modern civilization and capital's desires. 

The LED lights of a solid and organized sculptural structure, harmonize with the metal surface and cast a shadow over the space, blending urban life with the symbol of light. 

Light becomes a gaze into structured space, acting as a sculptural element in abstract surroundings. When it transforms into a gaze, reflection on seeing and being seen blurs subject and object. <City of Gaze-Nagoya> (2007), models an urban space with surveillance cameras and projects the gaze onto viewers. Working with a specific site related to the 5.18 Gwangju Democratization Movement, <Commercial Attache>, 2019, evokes painful history and memory, through the dynamics of the gaze. 

Jeong explores the dynamics of the gaze, surveillance, and thye issues of history and memory as they intersect with light and space. Video works, such as <Morning Sun>, (2019), and <Green Light>, (2022), are 3D animated films based on fictionalized or architectural spaces inspired by paintings, which capture the movement of light and its sculptural effects through a floating gaze. 

Immersed in the interaction between light and space, Jeong-ju Jeong attempts to give form to light in his series <Curved Lights>, (2021~) and <Metaphysical Star>, (2021~). To him, light is both an 'abstract idea' and a 'stranger'. It is transcendent, eternal, and a social system.