Installation view of 《Things That Stick and Roll》 © Space Willing N Dealing
Space Willing N Dealing is presenting 《Things That Stick and Roll》, a solo exhibition by artist Jeong Juwon, through October 24.
When sitting in front of the canvas, Jeong Juwon seeks to paint
the issues that feel closest to her own skin, or those that affect her most
deeply.
She considers painting a medium that is intimately connected to
the body of the person who makes it, and seeks to create works in which there
is no sense of disconnect between the artist and the work. Perhaps for this
reason, her paintings often begin with the place where she is situated, the
circumstances surrounding her, and her personal narratives.
Installation view of 《Things That Stick and Roll》 © Space Willing N Dealing
More recently, she has become interested in the care and
dependence between generations, as well as the complex emotions that arise from
them, through her experience of living with four generations of her family.
She has also been researching the surface of painting, focusing on
the similarity between the surfaces of a painting, human skin, and tree
bark—all of which bear traces of time compressed into their surfaces.
The exhibition 《Things That
Stick and Roll》 centers on adhesion, as well as
movement and change. Accordingly, the works primarily depict changing faces and
bodies, reflections on what has and has not changed in her practice, scenes
encountered while repeatedly moving between places, and landscapes in which
things have become entangled.
In particular, drooping eyelids, a weekly injection of Wegovy,
self-portraits depicting a face she cannot see herself, and masses of flesh
explore the changing body.
Installation view of 《Things That Stick and Roll》 © Space Willing N Dealing
In this way, her work emerges as masses in which things seen and
felt in everyday life become tangled together—where her practice and life,
family and the self, stories and images, surfaces and lines adhere to one
another.
When we walk, only the soles of our feet touch the ground, but
when we roll, our entire bodies come into contact with it. It is an act of
moving forward with the whole body. In this way, Jeong Juwon rolls across the
ground, influenced by her surroundings, embracing or spitting out what she
encounters through her sticky nature as she moves forward.
