Jongwan Jang

Jongwan Jang, born in Busan in 1983, is currently based in Seoul after graduating from Hongik University in Seoul. Jang creates a bizarre and surreal artistic world by combining diverse symbolic motifs and emphasizing certain color tones. The artist identifies three keywords—anxiety, fantasy, and redemption—as “the main emotional thread of human history.” His work explores and questions beliefs and anxieties about the idealized world promised by images of utopian landscapes and paradises. Jang extends his ongoing interest in landscape to the universe, combining agriculture and futurism with concepts such as evolution and enhancement. To create a cosmic and futuristic atmosphere using common rural and pastoral imagery, he continues to invoke the motifs of flora and fauna. Also, the artist builds a sci-fi beauty and evokes an uncanny sense of dread through compositions that combine multiple narratives delivered by the concepts of plants, agriculture, and green that usually conjure up images of safety and peace.