Jung Soojung
SEOUL
For the recent group exhibition “Hysteria: Contemporary Realism Painting” at Seoul’s Ilmin Museum of Art, South Korean artist Jung Soojung showed new paintings from 2023, including Still Life with Teeth, of pomegranates with molars instead of flowers and seeds; Sister, a nun with crimson flesh; and in Horn, a green fawn with a mirror on his head. In these vivid imaginations of bold, abstracted forms, featuring otherworldly imagery and complicated compositions, the 2016 Glasgow School of Art MFA graduate blends surrealist and Boschian styles, in defiance of both science and rationality.
One earlier work, (2018), which features (ca. 1503). Here, Jung’s figures are nymph-like creatures devoid of gender binary, a fantasy of an equal society in a composition as chaotic and whimsical as Bosch’s. But while they share visual qualities, their narratives differ, which begs the question: what exactly is the dialogue between the two artists?
