Yi Yi Jeong-Eun: Alive, Alive, Oh!

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Ora-Ora is pleased to present a solo show of new works by Korean artist Yi Yi Jeong-Eun, to take place in its Tai Kwun gallery in Hong Kong from 2 November to 10 December, 2023. The exhibition is titled: Alive, Alive, Oh! This is Yi Yi Jeong-Eun’s debut solo exhibition in Hong Kong, and first solo showing with Ora-Ora.

Yi Yi Jeong-Eun’s artworks are imbued with the colourful energy of the scenery around her, and seek to radiate the joys, glories and transience of the natural world rather than seeking refuge in pure figurative description.

With words adopted from the Irish folk song Molly Malone, Alive, Alive, Oh! rings out with an embrace of being. As the artist expounds: “Nature is an object and location that allows me to most keenly sense the fact that I am one of the changing things… I realize that I too am alive when I watch clouds sail across the sky.”

A celebration of the beauty of nature shines forth from her paintings, which are soaked in the hope-inspiring tones of summer, a stage of radiance under a horizon of sun and rainbows. Nature lies at the heart of the artist’s practice and in understanding her own artistic evolution. As she describes it: “While I am a human being, nature helps me realize that I am also a living animal.”

The artist will be showing more than 15 brand-new oil on canvas works. These include There, On Being Alive, Flowers_202349 (2023) which creates delicious oblongs of emerald grass against a raspberry floral background. This combination of wet-on-wet rapidity and carefulness of outline is echoed in There, Rainbow in the Sunset (2023), in which the artist presents two painterly styles in the same work, provoking a dramatic internal tension on the canvas.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Yi Yi Jeong-Eun was born in Suwon, South Korea in 1977. She received her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Seoul National University in 2005, and her master’s from the same institution in 2009. She currently lives and works in Seoul.

Yi Yi Jeong-Eun began by exploring the intriguing, pervasive landscape of the commercial world, navigating architecturally constructed ranks of goods in the manner of a cityscape, perceiving wares as buildings and spires. Piles of boxes became the skyline of a terrain, which is as much physical as it is aspirational. In recent years, she has opened herself to the vastness of the world around us, with nature lying at the heart of her practice. As she describes it: “Nature is an object and location that allows me to most keenly sense the fact that I am one of the changing things. While I am a human being, nature helps me realize that I am also a living animal.” Yi Yi Jeong-Eun’s artworks are imbued with colourful energy, and seek to radiate the joys, glories and transience of the natural world rather than pure figurative description. As such, she expresses “the spirit I sensed on the spot at that moment,” using animated brush strokes and robust matière.