ExhibitionFree4 days left

Alone with the Earth

Name: Alone with the Earth
Start: 2026-06-17
End: 2026-08-12
Location: Gallery Meme

Free · Jongno-gu Gallery Meme

Dates: Jun 17 ~ Aug 12
Venue: Gallery Meme
Area: Seoul Jongno-gu
Price: Free
Enquiries: 02-733-8877

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About this event

Exhibition Foreword Methodology of Dokdae [1] Lee Yeon-sook (Rita) 'Dokdae' is written with the Chinese characters for 'alone (獨)' and 'to answer/face (對)'. Broken down, it means 'facing each other alone without anyone else'. In common usage, it refers to a situation where a superior discusses a specific issue in secret with someone, a word presupposing an unequal hierarchical order. However, in this exhibition title, Jung Jungyeob transforms this into a different perspective. I interpret it in my own way: 'Dae' is commonly used as a notation distinguishing two opponents, corresponding to the English 'VS'. At the same time, 'dae' extends to 'against' someone else. As we know, opposition is always a movement directed in the opposite direction 'toward' someone else. To do so, a counterpart (相對) in the opposite direction from me must exist. Answering is the same. There is already someone there to whom I must return words. Therefore, even if it means 'alone' and 'faces', the actual word 'dokdae' always includes a certain presence not visibly shown—the 'Other'. 'Dokdae' is the confrontation and response between myself and a different Other. This is, of course, an event of discord with me. In the stiffly straight 'dokdae' characters made only of vertical (|) and horizontal (-) strokes, the absolute difference with the Other, who is incapable of reconciliation, negotiation, or agreement, is already exemplified and preserved as its own form. There is an intersection between myself and the Other, but no parallel lines. The encounter and confrontation between existence and existence without a single concession—in feminist language, this is written as 'equality'. Normally, equality means a state where human beings are guaranteed equal rights without discrimination. However, equality arising from a 'dokdae' relationship entails tension. This is because the Other is uncomfortable and causes fear in me. In fact, feminist politics and sensibility are akin to a kind of perversion ability that transcends the distinction between species and non-living/living things, transforming fear of something different from me into respect, awe—and above all, 'compassion'. A professional feminist subject not only disagrees with, but remains indifferent to, the way of thinking that automatically translates the 'difference' in power, size, and ability between me and the object into the language of patriarchal hierarchy. Achieving this state is followed by constant training. Perhaps that is why many reviewers read an alternative attitude in Jung Jungyeob's paintings, different from the authority normally bestowed by the word 'painter'. Indeed, as a bug-woman-painter, Jung Jungyeob "fearsomely" "gropes" through the "darkness" with "tactile sensation," daily meeting countless species and limbs of Others in a "lonely" and "sublime" way, staging 'dokdae' with them using a wooden panel canvas as a stage with her whole body. The rough surfaces of giant moths and giant grasses, blown up 1:1 to her scale, replay the choreography of drawing that the artist's body would have performed. The wondrous encounter with the Other, where every moment is a "first" and "primal" contact, is repeated through the practice of painting. Now, painting is another form of 'dokdae'. Therein lies the unrepeatable relationship with the Other. On the other hand, 'dokdae' is also translated as freedom for Jung Jungyeob. To speak arbitrarily, she, who is a great senior to me, has not given up for a single moment the tension between art and life—and the fun that such tension rather enables—at the boundary sites of the minjung (minjok/labor)-women ('periphery') over the past years, and is an artist who survived that tension. Through such experiences, with an instinct learned in her entrails, she considers freedom—and of course 'equality' as well—not as an infinite share, but as a state of "balance" experienced momentarily between extreme oppositions. From this perspective, freedom, unlike its general usage, is self-discipline and self-care that recognizes one's own limits and tests them. Painting is a concrete practice of this. As a mental space and physical place for training the 'dokdae' relationship between the Other and oneself, the canvas limits the painter Jung Jungyeob's intentions while simultaneously opening up the chance made possible 'from it'. The heterogeneous environment of wooden panel canvases, each with a different grain, is a matrix perfectly suited to producing the pictorial pleasure acquired only in this state of tension. Breaking down the word 'dokdae' again—'dae' also means agreement with the other person's words in modern Chinese. The direction her brush intends resists (against) the wooden panel and also accidentally coincides (correct), producing the sensual fun of physical contact. The enjoyment of the 'momentary gap' arising only between the tension of the subject and the world is the fundamental driving force of the "instinctive" movement called painting. Also, to quote Slavoj Žižek, this is almost everything we can expect from the concept of freedom, which is "burning fiercely with paradox and discord" [2]. Unlike the solitude that 'dokdae' at first glance implies, as the painter's attitude and method, it is overflowing with joy and playfulness regarding the accidental encounter and inevitable contact with the unknown Other. From the surface of the canvas that she stroked with brush and eyes along the wood grain, we discover anew the sixth sense of wondrously 'seeing' again as Others our interspecies kin who emerged together on the planet called Earth that has surrounded us since before we were born. Above all, this suggests filling our lives with the tension and wonder given by the difference called the Other. In all such processes, what ultimately remains for us is... none other than the fun that life gives! [1] Unless otherwise noted, all direct citations in this text are taken from Jung Jungyeob's 'Artist's Note', 'Word Play', and conversation with the artist. [2] Slavoj Žižek, translated by Noh Yoon-ki, Freedom, Hyunamsa, 2025, p. 205. Work Note (May 15, 2026) Mostly I am a bug. I sharpen my tactile senses and watch the direction. I grope for what I truly want. When a bug crawls vigorously, the first gesture wriggling inside my body When I waved my hands in the cliff-like darkness, fearful yet filled with earth dokdae I want to fully respire the night road I encounter every day after birth. Where did this innate anxiety, the fear that seeped in the moment I realized I was a woman, come from? On the way to a restaurant alone listening to music A single gunshot from afar will blow away this silence. I look into the gestures of a girl's survival record. Painting follows the clear grain of the mind A start, a stroke, hesitation, groping the bottom to find a path where none exists One day, quietly looking into the grains of wood made me move. Groping with brushstrokes, I painted the 7-wood-panel series 'Girl Survival Record - Gesture'. A woman's body dancing underwater mixes with water droplets, a cave in the darkness, and fern leaves, creating a story. Bizarre potato sprouts draw huge strokes and boast their existence. The gazes and wingbeats of moths met last summer mix with the flow of the wood grain. On a large canvas, the grasses I ate mingle with bugs, exuding a primal energy like ancient cave paintings. Silence and dynamics, enjoying a new breath while swaying and walking. Jung Jungyeob b. 1962 1985 Graduated from Department of Western Painting, College of Fine Arts, Ewha Womans University SOLO Exhibition 2026 Alone with the Earth, Gallery Meme, Seoul 2025 Beans Roll Anywhere, Stella Gallery, Seoul 2023 Jung Jungyeob's Connection Ring, A.P23, Seoul Insulted Yet Great, Gallery Meme, Seoul 2022 34th Lee Jung Seop Art Prize Commemorative Exhibition, Art Chosun Space, Seoul Questioning Labor, Jeon Tae-il Memorial Hall, Seoul Women Like Roads, Donyangjang B1, Daejeon Upside Down Red Beans, Bongsan Cultural Center, Daejeon 2021 Walking Moon, Art Center White Block, Heyri Gyeonggi 2009 First Supper - Goham Art Prize Commemorative Exhibition, Lee Ungno's House, Hongseong Star Appearing Everywhere, Cho Eun-sook Gallery, Seoul 2018 Changes in My Studio, Lee Sangwon Museum, Chuncheon 2017 Beans and the Great Candlelight, Trunk Gallery, Seoul Star Appearing Anywhere, Gallery Nori, Jeju 49 Mirrors, Space Mom Museum, Cheongju 2016 Bug, Gallery Skyepe, Seoul 2014 Painting Finding the Road, Untamed Life, Gildam Seowon, Seoul 2011 off bean, Gallery Skyepe, Seoul 2009 Face Landscape, Alternative Space Art Forum Rhee, Bucheon red bean, Gallery Skyepe, Seoul 2006 Erased, Arko Art Museum, Seoul Extinction, Binari Museum, Bonghwa 2002 Jung Jungyeob Solo Exhibition, Seoho Gallery, Seoul / Seoho Museum, Gyeonggi 2001 Strange Life, The Thickness of That Life, Shinsegae Gallery, Incheon 2000 Rushing Water, Insa Art Space, Seoul 1998 Jung Jungyeob Solo Exhibition, Kumho Museum, Seoul 1995 Living Embracing Life, 21st Century Gallery, Seoul GROUP Exhibition (selected) 2025 Hidden Breathing Artists Association - E-pi, Jung Jungyeob, Nook Gallery, Seoul O'Object, Mimesis Art Museum, Paju 2024 The 3rd Two - Asian Women's Art Exhibition, BBK Germany, Munich Speaking Bodies: Asian Women Artists, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul 2023 Arko Art Museum 50th Anniversary 'Where Do Wrinkles Pass', Arko Art Museum, Seoul 2022 Whose Story, Busan Museum of Modern Art 2020 Painting, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, Dream of Barbarism - Nuclear Dream 4, Art District P, Busan 2019 Opening Eyes to the World: Asian Art and Society 1960s~1990s, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, National Gallery Singapore 2013~2009 OFF THE BEATEN PATH : VIOLENCE, WOMEN AND ART : An International Contemporary Art Exhibition (An International Contemporary Art Exhibition Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway | 2009, University Art Gallery, San Diego, USA | 2009) 2012 Women In-Between : Asian Women Artists 1984-2012, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan 2008 The Offering Table : Activist Women from Korea, Mills College Museum, USA 2002 Gwangju Biennale Project 3, Gwangju Awards 2022 34th Lee Jung Seop Art Prize 2020 Gender-Equal Cultural Person Award 2018 4th Goham Art Prize Collections Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Arko Art Museum, Gwangju Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Art, Suwon I'Park Museum of Art, Busan Museum of Modern Art, etc. Publications 'Small, Soft and Great' Media Bus 2025, 'Beans Roll Anywhere' Ireunbi 2025, 'Changes in My Studio' Hexagon, 2018, 'Korean Contemporary Art Selection Jung Jungyeob' Hexagon, 2011

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