Jeoung Jae Choul

Born 1959 | Suncheon
Lived and worked Seoul, Died 2020

In his conceptual and performative works, Jeoung Jae Choul traced networks of humans and non-human objects that he encountered in his peripatetic journeys across the world. Included in the 14th Gwangju Biennale is a selection of works from Jeoung’s later Blue Ocean Project 2013–20. In works on paper such as Map of South Island and North Sea 2016, he traces the journeys of disposed objects as they drift the ocean. Some of the objects that he collected from seasides are displayed as an installation of hanging sculptures titled Floating Matter of Ocean 2013–20, suggesting unexpected possible afterlives for these discarded items. In a video series titled Breath 2018, the floating movements of discarded items on the surface of the ocean are compared to the act of breathing. By concentrating on the debris of human life that is otherwise left unnoticed, Jeoung blurs hierarchical boundaries between the human and the non-human.

Jeoung Jae Choul, Installation view, 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023). Image courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: glimworkers