Goyona Jung

Jung Goyona focuses on the fact that numerous individuals actively share and observe each other's lives on social media, and captures contemporary emotions in two-dimensional paintings by incorporating photos posted. The artist, who began her career by recording her daily life like a photograph based on oil painting, showcased nocturnal scenes such as deserted playgrounds and alleys, and the light and shadow of people and objects in her 2016 solo exhibition “Purpose of Memory” (Attertain) where she presented pieces that cast shadows. With the long desire to capture 'contemporaneity' in her work, she overcame the limitations of the materiality of the two-dimensional painting and captured contemporaneity through a performance called 'Real Live Painting' (2016-2018) (A painting work that directly projects images broadcast live on the Internet, such as CCTV, webcams, and self-cameras, and simultaneously draws the silhouette of a moving person live). The artist, who later became interested in individuals, selected unspecified people posted on social media, her acquaintances, or extremely personal moments taken by the artist that were 'planned through self-censorship, but wanting to hide the intention’ and filtered them on canvas once again. While translating them onto the canvas, real space and time are subjectively transformed by deleting all sense of place or emphasizing darkness to reveal light. She holds on to time and creates a narrative in the process of slowly piling up oil paints. The paint captures the layers of someone else's perfect time and space, which we could only see through a touch on the canvas, and they are reconstructed with her own sense. When collecting images from social media, Jung deliberates on the keywords for the exhibition and then selects the images she needs. Considering the composition of the exhibition, she appropriately collects people, landscapes, still objects, etc., while considering the basic elements of painting such as composition and color, and selecting elements of her interest (water, people) like she did in the exhibition 《Filtering》 where filtered images were selected, and in 《A Very Private Procedure_In My Algorithm》 where communication of personal stories that occur within the algorithm was deals with. The works presented in this exhibition continue the tone of her existing works, but incorporate the artist's individual perspective and view. She captured the Louisiana Modern Museum in Denmark in 〈Beyond the Gaze〉 (2024), and an art museum in Frankfurt, Germany in 〈Coexisting Time〉 (2024). The pink curtain in the background is an image taken by the artist herself, but the woman on the canvas is an image taken from social media. In 〈Taking a Breath〉 (2024), the image of the sea and a person sitting in a swimsuit are also taken from different sources. Rather than transferring the collected images onto the canvas as they are, she reproduces new scenes in paintings that subjectively transform time and space through a filtering process influenced by her perspective, which are then shared and observed by visitors at the exhibition. Images on social media are the artist’s unique means of communicating with the contemporary world to which she and her subjects belong through the medium of painting. “In some ways, sketching my everyday life is a simple record, yet capturing other people's everyday lives involves imagination. Transforming a photo posted on SNS into a painting creates a device that allows one to envision the situation and emotions in the image, and since the situation and emotions are not my own, I lack precise knowledge of them, thus creating a device that allows such things. This also applies to paintings that record my daily life. When I look at my paintings, I recall memories of the time, but when others look at my records, they 'imagine' and understand them in light of their own experiences. I wanted to try something like this … "Could it be that by curating our days and forming connections with people we meet online, we are expressing the loneliness and yearning for relationships that come with modern life?" - From the artist's note -