LONDON.- Delfina Foundation is presenting Private Collection: Unperformed Objects, the first UK solo exhibition by South Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong. In her practice as choreographer, dancer and performer, Jeong constantly renegotiates the relationship between the human body and the objects that surround it. She has built up a collection of plain everyday objects upon which she bestows a bizarre, disconcerting life through an intense and risky interaction with her own body to challenge notions of sexuality, technology and the female body.
In 2016, Jeong exhibited her complete collection at Atelier Hermes in Seoul as the recipient of the Hermès Foundation Missulsang Award. At Delfina Foundation, she creates a new installation that explores the relationship between her 'collection' and her creative process. Jeong has selected ‘unperformed objects’ - mannequins, vacuum cleaners, training machines and medical apparatus with a latent potential. The exhibition brings the narrative of these objects themselves into play, alongside decision-making and failure in the process of making performances.
In the gallery, these objects are clinically displayed on plinths, under strip lighting. Video monitors show clips of the ‘performed objects’ not present, those modified by Jeong and activated in durational performances where they are first used in intended and routine ways before Jeong’s movements morph into erotic, obsessive, or antagonistic actions. Jeong feeds her own energy back into these inanimate objects, positing the female body as the locus of reproductive responsibility within a gendered, exploitative economy.
In this light, the ‘unperformed objects’ become a collection of relics of a notion of civilization that Jeong seeks to challenge.
Born in 1980, Geumhyung Jeong is a South Korea-based choreographer, dancer and performer. Jeong studied Acting at Hoseo University in Asan, Dance and Performance at the Korean National University of Arts in Seoul, and Animation Film at the Korean Academy of Film Arts in Seoul. Her works have been presented at the Atelier Hermès, Seoul; New Museum Triennial, New York; Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Zürich; Brigittines International Festival, Brussels; SPIELART Festival, Munich; ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna; iDANS Festival, Istanbul; Contemporary Art Museum of Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; PACT Zollverein, Essen; and many others. Jeong was in residence at Delfina Foundation in spring 2017 in partnership with SongEun Art & Cultural Foundation.
