Media artist Yeondoo Jung will be the next artist featured at Ulsan Art Museum’s Immersive Media Art Laboratory (XR Lab). Jung’s Crow’s Eye View, the museum’s first commissioned immersive media artwork, will be on view from May 28, 2022 to July 31, 2022.

Crow’s Eye View was inspired by Yi Sang (1910–1937), one of Korea’s early modernist poets, who wrote a serial poem with the same title.

The artwork will project various scenes of Ulsan city through the eyes of crows, which are a common sight in the city due to their annual migration.

In the work, Jung compares the lives of crows to today’s urban lives. Aancod, a white Bohemian singer raised by a Japanese couple in Korea, represents urban nomads, who somehow refuse to settle down in a single location in the city. Aancod’s multicultural background has shaped him into a free spirit with nowhere to call home, which is similar to flocking crows’ free lives.  

“Most people have a place to set their heart, even if one continues to live a migrating life. And what we share is the fact that everyone, whether a new immigrant or an emigrant, has a place,” Jung said in an interview about the artwork.

Artist Yeondoo Jung, one of the most internationally acclaimed contemporary artists in South Korea, uses a variety of media such as photography, video, media installation, and performance, to embody the fantasy of today’s society in his artworks. He takes subject matters from the everyday lives of modern people to show how reality and imagination, the inner and outside worlds, and the actual and ideal are always closely intertwined.

Jung began to gain recognition in the Korean art world in 2001 with his first solo exhibition Borame Dance Hall at Alternative Space LOOP, one of the first alternative spaces in Korea.

The installation consisted of a wallpaper piece that covered the exhibition space and featured patterns of middle-aged members of a Borame Park sports dancing academy. Dancesport originates from social dancing in Western cultures, which was mostly done for the privileged. Its style has changed over time as it has spread to other cultures, and it was formerly seen to be an inappropriate hobby for married people in Korea. Jung attempted to capture the altered meaning of the dancesport while also suggesting that romance and happiness do not always require ideal circumstances, such as youth and wealth.

In 2007, Jung was the youngest winner of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Korea Artist Prize in the field of photography and video.

In 2008, Jung gained attention when Documentary Nostalgia, an 85-minute video piece shot in a single long take using a static camera with a sequence of six movie sets, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

His works are also in the collections of several art museums, including the Leeum Museum of Art, the MMCA in Seoul, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, and the Seattle Art Museum. Jung has held numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including in the U.S., Japan, France, Germany, and Spain.

References

• 울산시립미술관, XR랩 전시ㅣ오감도(烏瞰圖) (Ulsan Art Museum,  Yeondoo Jung: Crow’s Eye View)
• 디자인프레스, 정연두 작가 작품을 XR랩 전시로 만나다, 2022.04.28