Jungyoon Hyen: Walking on Tiptoes

The Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Jungyoon Hyen, the winner of the inaugural KCCUK and SPACE Studio Award.

The jurors, Jonathan Watkins (Director, Ikon Gallery) and Karen Davies (Head of Artist Development, SPACE) selected, in 2017, Jungyoon Hyen as the 2018 winner of the Studio Award. Beginning in September 2017, this annual award is presented by the KCCUK and SPACE Studio, with the prize comprising of a 12-month residency at SPACE Studio and the chance to present their work at the KCCUK shortly after. The Award marks the beginning of a special relationship between the KCCUK and SPACE as main partners of the Emerging Artists Support Programme for Korean artists in the UK.

With interests in the invisible power relations that exist between the city, the body, and the community, Hyen’s practice explores how the unseen authorities within the capitalist city impacts and dismantles our everyday life. Hyen’s works often take inspiration from the scenes she encounters whilst wandering around the city – in particular, any representational forms of control and resistance, whether obscured or apparent, including any objects that have long-since strayed from their original function such as abandoned bicycle chains to disfigured lamp posts.

Based on her research over the past three years, including her time at SPACE studio, Walking on Tiptoes brings together non-functional pieces that Hyen has created through deconstructing, re-contextualising and re-appropriating familiar forms and symbolism of objects from her surroundings and everyday life in the city. Presenting them as a potent form of resistance to the invisible power structure embedded within the city space, Hyen invites the viewers to participate in a quiet protest to envision a meaningful future.

Her visually cartoonish works, like cut off scenes from fictive narratives, stimulate the viewers to expand their imagination to visualise motional stories from its stillness, and there are paradoxical situations where anxiety and hope intersects – evoking an emotional sense of humour and sadness or cute and pathetic at the same time. The non-functional, mutedly spoken, yet colourful sculptural pieces lighten the space with a sense of playfulness and mischievousness, all the while questioning the ontological relationship between the individual, the city and the objects within, and how we can re-situate ourselves within a constantly shifting fluid state.

Jungyoon Hyen: Walking on Tiptoes is presented in partnership with SPACE.

About Jungyoon Hyen

Jungyoon Hyen (b. 1990, South Korea) graduated from Ewha Women’s University, Seoul, with a BA in Painting and attained an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London in 2017. Prior to her winning the 2018 KCCUK and SPACE Studio Award, she has held exhibitions at various galleries and public exhibition spaces including events at Camden Arts Centre (2017), London, The Royal Edinburgh Sculpture Court (2016), as well as participating in a residency at La Ira de Dios (2016), Buenos Aires.