Geumhyung Jeong: Under Construction
25th September, 2024 – 8th December, 2024
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA)
The Mall London
The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA) presents, Under Construction, a solo exhibition by Geumhyung Jeong featuring a newly commissioned installation of sculpture and video, and series of live performances.
Photo Cheolki Hong, glimworkers
Working from her background in choreography and a studied interest in the role of objects and technology in our lives, Jeong uses her body and animatronic figures built from DIY parts to parse the uncanny relationships between people and machines. In her past work, Jeong has animated self-constructed remote-controlled robots using mechanical and tech hardware tools and spare mannequin parts and medical dummies. With this new exhibition in the ICA’s lower galleries, Jeong expands her ongoing project, Under Construction, incorporating complete human skeleton models as a central component of the work.
Photo by Kanghyuk Lee, 2023
Jeong’s installation offers a proposal for the active life of sculpture in a public institution. The artist will perform in person with her figural machines multiple times during the exhibition (dates to be announced shortly), reimagining and shifting the installation.
Jeong’s work shares a valuable history with performative and interactive sculpture since the 1960s, while being firmly rooted in the present and within a specific context of technology in late-stage capitalism. The artist approaches this from the perspective afforded by an adolescence spent in Seoul during the steep rise in consumerism in South Korea.
This tender yet uncomfortable work represents a nuanced investigation of global techno-capitalism, addressing human relationships with our technological counterparts through care and mutual exchange. Jeong addresses this fundamental component of our appended human society in a way only sculpture can – by addressing the physical relationships in space that underline our connection to objects as active agents.
Geumhyung Jeong: Under Construction opens on the 25th September, 2024 until the 8th of December, 2024 at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA)
©2024 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA)
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