HYUNSUN JEON

In altar paintings from the 15th century found in Italy and the Netherlands, the window opens onto a landscape and tells a story that complements or illustrates the main scene. In the 20th century, Matisse turned it into an allegory of painting itself; each painting is an open window onto the artist’s inner world. In Jeon’s work, the window divides the composition and allows different levels of reading and interpretation. The subjects that unfold here are rooted in her memory and imagination. Memories of fairytales, taken from her more figurative paintings of 10 or 15 years earlier, appear here in singular effects of colour and material.

The jerky contours reveal Jeon’s interest in pixelisation. The images that have surrounded us for the last thirty years are essentially digital. From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, they were characterised by imprecise outlines and an initially limited number of squares (pixels), which increased steadily as technology advanced. When she was younger, Hyunsun Jeon saw her video games as forms and spaces structured by pixels, which she now recreates by superimposing images and materials. On the canvas, the geometric figures and flat areas of colour reveal the technical process that produced them: it becomes the very subject of the painting.

This deconstruction and reconstruction of the digital image is at the heart of the concerns of a new generation of painters. Jeon’s exploration of the limits of representation extends to the question of the concrete arrangement of the painting in its space. She has developed the habit of assembling her paintings into wall-mounted or freestanding structures, without this becoming a constraint, as she also allows each work to be viewed and hung individually. Placed upright on the floor, the paintings are hinged together and resemble screens. On the wall, paintings in different formats are juxtaposed in a staggered, off-centre way, reinforcing the distancing effect. The title, ’Here and There’, evokes the different planes within the paintings, from near to far, as well as the contrast between the space of the viewer and that of the painting: “here” designating the actual place, that of the exhibition, and ‘there’ referring to the imaginary universe unfurled on the surface of the painting.

This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in France. Hyunsun Jeon has been featured in several group exhibitions in Korea (Seoul Museum of Art, 2023; Songeun, 2023; Leeum Museum, 2022), and the galleries Gallery2 (Seoul) and Esther Schipper (Berlin) have given her solo exhibitions. She was one of three finalists for the Jean-François Prat prize in Paris in 2024. In 2025, she was chosen for a commission for the Hermès showcase in Seoul (The Forest of Drawing, curated by Hye Jo Yum and Karlee Han), and next October, several of her paintings will be included in Colours of Korea, a group exhibition at the Korean Cultural Centre in Paris.

Born in 1989 in Seoul, she lives and works on Jeju Island (South Korea).