MIN JUNG-YEON, L'aube après la nuit (Dawn after night)

About

The immersive installation presented at the Musée Guimet brought the visitor into a forest where trees, copper pipes and large feathers intertwined until leading him/her towards obscure depths… This artwork can be read on different levels but its essence is a message of reconciliation, an incentive to cohabitate while respecting differences. Though this piece, Min Jung-Yeon expresses her hope for a common future for the two Koreas and a desire to overcome an adolescent trauma that kept her away from her childhood forest forever.

Must one dive into obscurity to know, embrace, and finally be able to (re)capture the light?

That is what Min Jung-Yeon seems to suggest with the title of her new show: L’aube après la nuit (Dawn after night).

In her latest works on paper, colour is much more present: subtle yet undeniable lights.

The traces of large paintbrush gestures hold an important place - like a liberation, a new breath. One can recognize the impulse of certain calligraphers. Looking closer, one notices that these big movements   juxtapose themselves with minuscule touches of ink or pencil. These transform the gesture into an element of landscape - the “base” of a mountain or an underwater wave - when it is not simply an expression of energy. If Min Jung-Yeon has often sought to make contraries meet through her depicted subject matters, she has now let go to express them in the differentiation of the gesture itself. A new strength emanates, an unbounded power that arises like a storm. Or a delicate breeze that carries you...

background

Min Jung-Yeon (born in 1979 in Gwangju, Republic of Korea) grew up in the South-Korean countryside where, from a very young age, she started observing and immersing herself in the surrounding nature. In 1997, she moved to Seoul to study fine art at Hongik University. After her studies, she felt the need to confront herself with different ways of thinking and left her native country to attend the Fine Arts Academy in Paris (ENSBA), where she studied under Jean-Michel Alberola. She graduated in 2006. The artist has lived in France since and continues to create a body of work nourished by her country, as well as by her life experiences and emotions.

Min Jung-Yeon’s work (drawing, painting and installation) has been the subject of many exhibitions in international institutions:  Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Etienne Métropole (2012), State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow, 2017), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taichung, 2010), Musée National des arts asiatiques – Guimet (Paris, 2019-2020), etc. In 2021, the Centre Culturel Coréen (Paris) will present a solo show of the artist. 

In France, her work has joined important public collections, namely those of the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Etienne Métropole and the Musée National des arts asiatiques – Guimet.

The artist’s work has been the subject of several publications, such as her first monograph Hibernation, published in 2009, followed by a catalog of her solo exhibition at the MAMC+ Saint-Etienne, Métropole,  Demander le chemin à mes chaussures (Asking my shoes for the way). Beaux-Arts magazine dedicated a special edition (Hors série, Min Jung-Yeon, 2019) to her work and her recent exhibition at the Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet.