Eclipse Seoul Museum of Art 2014
Eclipse 2014, steel, motor, gears, FRP 900 x 230 x 40 cm, 2piece
Jung Sungyoon says "Eclipse" can be compared to an encounter. When you meet a person, you expect to see something bright and clear about the person but actually experience nothing but being left out in the darkness. He also says that while eclipse, light of stars tends to occur from the darkness behind the sun by gravitational pull.
In astronomy, "Eclipse" is a phenomenon that one celestial body hiding the other body or entering to its shadow. Solar eclipse, the typical Eclipse, is a phenomenon that the moon covers the sun by moving in between the sun and Earth. The moon is superimposed on top of the sun and the people will experience a dramatic darkness under the daylight.
The etymology of eclipse tells that this is not just a matter of covering something. Abandoned, downfall, all existence come to a stop……. situation can be imagined when the humanity experienced the darkness by first time. They might have thought the world was over. Which was actually a rotary motion going through an unimaginable darkness……. Perfect darkness wipes out everything. Not even self-conscious, but also the memory of existence.
- Park Sangmi
Eclipse 2014, steel, motor, gears, FRP 900 x 230 x 40 cm, 2piece
The Force that causes solar eclipse is a cosmic scale way beyond human imagination. It's a level which human cannot intervene or manipulate. It is reckless for human to reproduce such appearance. In Jung Sungyoon's “Eclipse", Black sun and black moon splits and meets again by the action of machinery equipment.
They Spin Like Nonsense, 2015, steel, aluminum, motor, billiard balls 21 x 320 x 10 cm
Squares 2016, steel, motor, plastics 200 x 270 x 90 cm 2piece
Shapes 2016, steel, motor, plastics 400 x 270 x 90 cm 3 pieces
Eclipse (653) 2014, steel, motor, gears, plastic 1200 x 420 x 120 mm Eclipse 2014, 2015, steel, motor, gear, plastic 190 x 120 x 120 cm
Hello Motors, mixed media, 70 x 75 x 27 cm , 2010
Machine does not have a heart. Like the heart of a person who lost love.
Like the title from the depiction of men and women dancing, each ball is performing senseless rotation which is similar to the pattern of relationship that we make. 49 is a remainder obtained by subtracting one from 50. Less than half is what is left after the lost love, and 49 balls is a symbol of it. If we love by heart, with a whole heart, lost love would not even come close to be 'a heart'.
Jung Sungyoon's “Eclipse" is a represented eclipse. Therefore, it is superior than the sun. Faithful to its duty, this shoddy eclipse machine moves without any mistake. It also does not know how to think or stop. It clearly shows that this is not a real eclipse, but still does its role honestly. Humans think something like symbol, metaphor, and rhetoric makes the richness of representation. Jung Sungyoon's machine is the opposite. There is no rhetoric, metaphor or symbolism but a silent machine doing its job. The performance of silent working machine has created beauty. - Youngjun Lee
Sungyoon Jung’s work ultimately prompt viewers to ponder on humans’ traumas of losing their identities by depicting the circular path of the beginning, expansion, and end of desire and trust through devised mechanical instruments.
Through the operating mechanisms of mechanical devices represented like a paradoxical theater of the absurd, he has explored the conditions under which such circular systems are presented. Major exhibitions include 《Eclipse》(2014) based on the Seoul Museum of Art Emerging Artists Support Grant and 《Minor Threat: Shapes》(2016) at the Kim Chong Yung Museum. As for residency programs, he has participated in the SeMA Nanji Residency during 2012-13.
Sungyoon Jung
