“La table éphémère”, 2022, courtesy Min Jung-Yeon & Galerie Maria Lund

You might remember the extraordinary installation by Min Jung-Yeon at musée Guimet three years ago? She used very large drawings in ink to produce a forest of birch trees which reflected in mirrors. A smaller version of “Tissage” (weaving) is visible at the moment at the Korean Cultural Center on 20 rue la Boétie, a whole building devoted to business, tourism and the arts in South Korea. The forty year old artist who lives near Toulon in the South of France, is very inspired by the local red cliffs and paints in acrylic, white shapes which look like stones or buildings? Born in Gwangju, she studied in Seoul and in Paris, at Ecole des Beaux Arts, in Jean Michel Alberola‘s studio. This new exhibition is called “Ce qui reste” (what remains) and is visible until March 11.

The artist Min Jung-Yeon at the opening of the show

Once there was a flood in her father’s house in Korea,  and his watercolors were washed away. This souvenir has always remained in her mind and Min Jung-Yeon has used the same process in some of the works in the show. She also uses different techniques in applying paint and prints on the surface which gives the canvas a special depth. Pencil, ink and acrylique (and collages) play in a very abstract way with motifs of rock, sea and sand. The paintings are serene and mineral, but are more abstract than in the past. Most of them were matured during the confinement and painted in 2022.

The superb space at the South Korean Cultural Center with Slence-diptyque and Silence 2

Fascinated by quantic physics and traditional Asian philosophy, the artist includes emotions and sensitivity in the fifteen (mostly) very large paintings she shows. The classical premises of the Center are a wonderful contrast to her “lunar” paintings and if I have to admit that I love her birch trees above all, the evolution of her themes is very promising.

The artist with her gallerist Maria Lund in the Tissage installation

Prices range from 5 300€ to 41 000 € for a diptyque. But the exhibit is free at Centre culturel Coréen, 20 rue la Boétie.