Artist Jeong Kyungja Captures Moments of Serendipitous Sensation Through the Camera

'Drifting', 'So, Suite', 'Elegant Town'

Story within a Story_27, 2011

Suspended Landscape_17, 2011

Language of Time_15, 2014

Nevertheless_02, 2021

Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

She has held 13 solo exhibitions until now(2022). She presented her works in various exhibition space such as Toyota Photo Space(Busan, Korea), SPACE 22(Seoul, Korea), Index Gallery(Seoul, Korea).

In 2008, She held solo exhibition after selected for Emerging Artist Award at Gallery Lux(Seoul, Korea). She held an exhibition to commemorate winning at the Ilwoo Photography Award under the title of 《The Roots of Coincidence》 at Ilwoo Space(Seoul, Korea).

Recently(2021) at Gallery Jinsun(Seoul, Korea), her solo exhibition 《Serene Days》 presented a new work that contains the gaze facing today’s chaos after the global epidemic.

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

KP Gallery(Seoul, Korea), UARTSPACE(Seoul, Korea), Seoul Museum of Art(Seoul, Korea), Dong-gang Museum of Photography(Yeongwol, Korea), Daegu Art Factory(Daegu, Korea), The Central Academy of Fine Arts(Beijing, China), Verkligheten Gallery(Umeaa, Sweden)

Awards (Selected)

She was awarded the 5th ILWOO Photography Prize(ILWOO Foundation, Korea).

Collections (Selected)

Her works are in collections of various museums such as National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Bank(Gwacheon, Korea), Government Art Bank(Gwacheon, Korea), ILWOO Foundation(Seoul, Korea), Goeun Museum of Photography(Busan, Korea).

Originality & Identity

Jeong Kyungja straightly captures the moments and things that accidentally happen and events in typical situations of one’s everyday life. The things that catch the artist’s impression without a specific motive are recorded delicately, and the objects that are not inside the daily context are captured in the frame of an image, so they become unique existential beings. Jeong Kyungja sees the world around her sensitively, and she thinks about the meaning of random moments, such as the cycle of life and time.

“The images of the world cut out and recorded by the camera are a part of the world and an expression hidden outwardly.”

The artist films ordinary and familiar objects in beautiful and poetic sceneries. These are just simple moments, but they are addressed with inevitability. Even if those do not have a specific meaning, the objects deliver some impression of a city or particular space. According to the artist, things that do not function properly can be characterized as almost near death, and she names these ‘things like similar to me’. The artist’s view is vivid but calm and captures even the desperation of reality.

Jeong Kyungja’s snapshots are full of stillness and unstable unfamiliarity. The objects and spaces in the photo screen are unpredictable and even have weird structures. The subject is familiar, but information about the background or location remains ambiguous. The subject matter and perspective of the photograph are also different. The audience tries to find out the context of the photo or the intention of what the artist filmed; however, it is difficult to point out. Instead, the audience will create their own story by following the arrangement of the works that are curated differently in each exhibition.

The audience’s experience in Jeong Kyungja’s photographs is the same as what she illustrates in her series exhibition 《So, Suite》 (2018). The hotel that she mentioned is about a ‘space where new stories are created by piling up infinite different stories of various anonymous people.’ It is also a ‘space that always provides an organized space to prepare for the next.’ The audience experiences a new ‘present’ in a place where meaning is absent, like a white sheet that is changed every day.

The discontinuous fragments of the present and memories are individually combined and edited with thousands of meanings. The memories and realities that are not well-defined make us realize that there is no meaning. Existence is meaningless, and there is no reason to exist. The audience looks at it with cautious, sensitive, and friendly views.

Style & Contents

Jeong Kyungja explores the origin of things that were accidentally placed somewhere. She does not have a specific meaning, but she photographically records the extremities of the vivid sensations she experienced and shares them with the audience.

In the exhibition ≪Origin of Coincidence≫ held after winning the Ilwoo(一宇) Photography Award, the artist introduces photographs she filmed for 5 years, starting from studying abroad in the UK until after her return. She presented a series of three photographs: ‘Language of Times’ (2013-2014), ‘Speaking of Now’ (2012-2013), and ‘Story Within A Story’ (2010-2011).

She takes photos like a tree pierced by electric wires, a friend fighting with an illness, an electric plug appears like blood vessels, the bare wire of a hanger, or cherry blossoms hanging over the ivy. Kyungja Jeong visualizes landscapes approaching death and the relationship with accidental objects with her consideration of life circles and the surrounding world.

Since 2016, Jeong Kyungja has started to explore the experience of people who are losing their memories. In her solo exhibition 《Boundaries of the Senses》 (2019, Space22, Seoul), she shows the series ‘Drifting’ (2016~2019) and ‘Elegant Town’ (2014~2015). Sadness or unfamiliar emotions and atmosphere are illustrated in her past works; on the contrary, her recent works capture the strangeness of sensual and exotic landscapes.

The artist takes photos of city buildings and suits in hotels that do not have enough depth and strength to endure the time flow. The hotel room is a place with a unique temporality and where guests stay and leave. The days passing by are not remembered, and only the present exists.

Jeong Kyungja presents a new work 〈 Nevertheless 〉 (2020~2021) with 〈 So, Suite 〉 in her exhibition named 《Quiet Days》 held in 2021. The photos of indoor plants, landscapes and natural outside the windows, snowy mountains and the sea, artificial botanical gardens, and indoor spaces were arranged in different sizes and heights, and monotone and colourful tones mixed together. A day passes like today, and nature changes slightly.

The artist configures the artificial and nature together and thinks about life that continues and repeats daily life amid a pandemic.

Constancy & Continuity

Jeong Kyungja’s photographs are not only intuitive and aesthetic but also express detailed realistic texture, so it feels surreal. Surprisingly, all these aesthetic and present scenes are composed in the traditional photographic way without any retouching or manipulation.

Awarded the Ilwoo Photography Prize in 2013, her works got an assessment pursued a complete understanding of the artist’s emotion and photographic way with high-ended arts.

The artist’s capacity and skills are outstanding in breaking the world’s elements into parts. Jeong Kyungja barely searches for a particular subject or social issue to discuss in her works. Even if she only takes pictures of what passes by with minimal equipment, Jeong Kyungja’s photographs never remain as simple records or representations of reality.

It captures the abstract thoughts about the world, crossing daily life and objects, such as city and nature, life and death. What “suddenly popped up reality” (referred to Taewoo HEO) and “ventilative talent” “pressing the artifacts of reality” (referred to Youngsil SON) shows “an image with vague meaning but a clear sense.”(referred to Eunjeong JUNG).

The artist captures the reality through photographs, even in a pandemic situation. Nevertheless, time is sustained without any meaning. Besides, Jeong Kyungja’s artworks give a healing time and space for the next step.

The audience may be questioning ‘what will be on her photos?’ There might be an assumption; it will be a portrait of objects commonly shown in the street or the house, in nature or the city.

Artist_K-Artist

Artist Jeong Kyungja Captures Moments of Serendipitous Sensation Through the Camera

October 29, 2024

A Team

Photographer Jeong Kyungja (b. 1974) captures fleeting sensory moments in everyday life—whether in the city, nature, or among people—through her camera. Her photographs do not seem to involve any special techniques but instead clearly reveal the subject, evoking a sense of intuition.

Jeong’s working process is just as intuitive as her photography. Using a minimalistic digital camera, she captures moments encountered in reality through spontaneous snapshots. Rather than preparing and staging scenes for her photos, she allows the images to unfold as they appear and as she feels them.

Jeong Kyungja, Spiegel im Spiegel_13, 2007 ©Jeong Kyungja

She focuses on beings that seem disconnected from ordinary spaces of daily life: objects that have lost their place, things that are alive yet seem as though they've already lost their vitality, and entities that are incomplete and impermanent.

In her Spiegel im Spiegel (2007) series, the subjects reflect moments of oppression from reality and fragments of dark, deep-seated memories. The artist chose objects that allowed her to project her inner self, describing the process as a constant introspection and the resulting images as portraits of her self-consciousness.

Jeong Kyungja, Spiegel im Spiegel_10, 2007 ©Jeong Kyungja

The Spiegel im Spiegel series is connected to the artist’s past, dreams, and unconscious mind, ultimately touching on what she perceives as ‘death.’ The combination of several photographs—fragmented images from everyday life that may or may not be related—was intended to create an unpredictable, interconnected narrative.

Jeong Kyungja, Story within a Story_27, 2011 ©Jeong Kyungja

In her Story within a Story (2010-2011) series, produced during her studies in the UK, she captured moments of connection with objects she encountered by chance in reality, using a traditional straight photography approach. Through these objects, the artist tells stories of her sensory experiences of another world within real spaces.

The subjects of Story within a Story are familiar objects and scenes that one might ordinarily pass by unnoticed in daily life. For example, windows, cobwebs, dead insects, buoys on the sea, and flower trees are depicted clearly, just as they are. The objects captured by the artist’s camera are chosen from deeply subjective moments. Rather than intending to directly instruct or convey something specific, she photographs what catches her attention and stimulates her senses.

Jeong Kyungja, Speaking of Now_01, 2012 ©Jeong Kyungja

Meanwhile, the Speaking of Now series (2012-2013) is a confession of the experiences of life and death that a close friend of the artist went through. Jeong Kyungja captured the boundary between life and death and the moments in between, using a tender yet warm perspective, through images of her ailing friend and surrounding objects.

Jeong Kyungja, Language of Time_11, 2014 ©Jeong Kyungja

In her Language of Time (2013-2014) series, Jeong captured objects in abandoned spaces, frozen in time. This work portrays disappearing entities, suspending them in a moment where they are neither fully alive nor entirely extinct. In other words, Language of Time is a project that documents the cyclical process of creation, growth, and eventual dissolution through the medium of photography.

Jeong Kyungja, Elegant Town_33, 2015 ©Jeong Kyungja

In the Elegant Town (2015-2016) series, fragmented images encountered in urban spaces are combined. The images in the photographs create a contradictory atmosphere, for example, juxtaposing the vibrant green of nature with the stark, towering buildings of a newly developed city.

The subtle recombination of familiar landscapes from unnamed places does not clearly indicate or signify a specific meaning. Instead, it leaves room for diverse interpretations depending on the viewer’s perspective.

Jeong Kyungja, Drifting_05, 2018 ©Jeong Kyungja

And Jeong introduced the Drifting (2016-2019) series, in which she captured anonymous spaces that have lost their distinctiveness. The landscapes in this series depict large residential complexes, churches, and their surrounding areas. Though these are spaces where many people pass through, in her photographs, they appear as if they are abandoned ruins or artificial model buildings.

As she wandered through the city, the artist was prompted by questions such as, "Does that building have a past? Does it have a future? Will it be remembered in history?" These thoughts led her to capture these landscapes. The portraits of cities, stripped of their memories and histories due to indiscriminate urban development, are captured as images of buildings that seem to float without depth or substance.

The So, Suite (2018) series captures the interior of a 25-year-old hotel suite. A hotel is a transient space, where daily memories are bleached away like the freshly laundered white sheets changed every day. Despite its long 25-year history, the past of this space holds no significance to the anonymous guests who stay there. Jeong sought to capture the fading, forgotten memories embedded in every corner of the suite, which no one would find or remember again.

In 2021, during the pandemic, she presented the Nevertheless series, which captured the changing landscapes of everyday life, likening them to nature. The images in Nevertheless feature scenes of blooming cherry blossoms, trees that have shed their leaves, winter mountains covered in white snow, the ceaseless waves of the sea, and the sky. All of these elements, standing in their place with nothing of their own, continually empty and fill with time, embodying change.

In her 2021 solo exhibition “Serene Days” at Gallery Jinsun, Jeong Kyungja selected photographs from both So, Suite and Nevertheless, printing them in various sizes and arranging them in an overlapping display. Time always flows the same, and nature quietly changes. By juxtaposing the artificial with the natural, the artist reflects on life and the repetition of daily life that persist even during the pandemic.

In this way, Jeong Kyungja's photographs capture traces of memories or hidden stories embedded in the ordinary landscapes of daily life. The collected fragments of everyday life are displayed in varying sizes and tones or juxtaposed with other images, creating new moments of interaction with the audience. Through this interaction, a third narrative—different from the original story—is continually generated.

"My photographs commonly contain stories hidden within time and space. These stories are sensed and remembered through my perceptions. Sensation becomes the beginning of memory and the stimulus that allows me to perceive the world, resulting in images that become imprinted on me.

Each of these dissected images of the world can be seen as a concealed expression of reality, and through the reassembly of these fragmented images, I seek the possibility of another narrative.”

Jeong Kyungja studied photography at Chung-Ang University and Graduate School, and graduated with an M.A. in Contemporary Art from the University of Edinburgh, UK. She won the Grand Prize at the 23rd Gwangju Shinsegae Art Festival Award (2022) and the 5th Ilwoo Photo Prize (2013), and has held more than 15 solo exhibitions, including “Another Face” (Museum Hanmi Samcheong Annex, 2023), “Boundary” (Space 22, 2019), and “The Roots of Coincidence” (Ilwoo Space, 2014).

She has participated in several group exhibitions at various domestic and international institutions including Weltkunstzimmer (Düsseldorf, 2022), Nam Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, 2018), Platform Changdong 61 (Seoul, 2017), and Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, 2017). Her works are in the collections of the Jeonnam Museum of Art, Goeun Museum of Photography, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Bank, and the books include The Roots of Coincidence (Ilwoo Foundation, 2014) and In between Something and Nothing (Hezuk Press, 2012), and her photographic work is featured in the essay A Silence Passion (Maumsancheck, 2004).

References

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Artist_K-Artist Artist Jeong Kyungja Captures Moments of Serendipitous Sensation Through the Camera 2024.10.29

Museum_Exhibition Jeong Kyungja's Solo Exhibition "Another Face" on View Through June 4, 2023, at Museum Hanmi 2023.04.21

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