Designers Jung Yeon KIM

Jung Yeon KIM is a South Korean artist, president of International Association of Social Leisure Development (IASLD), and design consultant. Born in Seoul, graduating in Fine Art and Art science departments from Hongik University, she executed many projects as illustrator and graphic designer for her clients such as the Ministry of Justice of S.Korea, Ajou University and Korea University. From 2011 she undertook in France her MA in Contemporary Art and doctoral research in Anthropology, pursuing her idea of multidisciplinary artforms.

The world of Jung Yeon KIM is one of innocence and wonder. Her compositions translate the pure emotion of a child of the Universe, marveling at its dimension and all that goes on. This particular child knows she is not at its centre, but exhilarates in the energy expended by each and every one in the pursuit of their goal. Sporting metaphors and architecture loom large in her compositions, both as a stage on which the player may feel the lonesomeness of the long-distance runner, and as depository of that energy, expended generation after generation in consolidating a framework : The way we live.

The world is a construct, a projection of our ideals onto matter. In this her art mirrors the primal reflex of the designer. Intuitively, but also through erudite research — these are not the idle jottings of an immature spirit — she connects with notions theorized, amongst others, by her near namesake (the psychologist Jung), such as archetype and the unknowable subconscious.

The series Leisure Industries posits the paradox of modern life concisely — everyone works so hard to enjoy themselves but, as the Ecclesiaste points out, this is a vain pursuit since the essence of Life is elsewhere.

If life is a permanent building site, its fun is in the making, the finality of which is less the artifact itself, than what the process does in terms of conditioning and forming our individual and collective worldviews. KIM Jung Yeon’s art may be introspective but it is resolutely about the individual in society, and repugns the pseudo-artistic nombrilisme of much contemporary production.

Anthropology, but other intelligences too, have informed her own poetic, which speaks to our experience. Beat Poets (2019) is probably the most salient example of this way of supra-disciplinary way of seeing.  Her projects instigated after 2016 (Reality series, 2016) began with academic research in the field of Anthropology. Concrete subject matter compares major terms defining reality: spiritual, physical and virtual, which are perceived as backgrounds, or worlds, of three distinct natures. Humanity’s symbolic use of the tool, which represents each of those three worlds concerned, was questioned in order to challenge once more our conceptual divisions and anthropocentric framings of what is ‘reality’.

Earlier works (before 2016) each have their own particular theme, but are also closely interrelated with the subject reality.
Through those initials works, a poetic interpretation about evolving states of mind induced by living out reality (Tanning People, 2009-2018, concluded with a video), and a playful approach on the conceptual introduction of virtual-ity (virtual reality) into present reality (LEISURE series, 2015-), she spoke of socially and semantically broadened notions about reality as defined by a word.s

During the FUORISALONE 2024, re-introducing the latter project "LEISURE," she reflects with a pinch of humour on the various ways that modern man has invented for itself to 'spend time.'