Tina Kim Gallery is pleased to present Kyung Jeon: Belle Rascal. For her second solo exhibition with the gallery, Jeon has chosen an approach that evokes her process – exhibiting a selection of small works, preparatory drawings, and pages from her sketchbook alongside two fully-realized large-sca... Read more
Tina Kim Gallery is pleased to present Kyung Jeon: Belle Rascal. For her second solo exhibition with the gallery, Jeon has chosen an approach that evokes her process – exhibiting a selection of small works, preparatory drawings, and pages from her sketchbook alongside two fully-realized large-scale paintings.
Drawing influences from such disparate sources as children’s fairytales, traditional Korean genre painting, and the eccentric worlds of Henry Darger and Hieronymus Bosch, Jeon’s works explore in-depth issues of portraiture and narrative. The mural-sized Little Persons, Big Steps and A Weeping Willow (both 2009) offer sweeping vistas of seemingly fantastical lands. Elaborately-rendered, these locales are inhabited by diminutive characters, deliberately simplified to function as archetypes of male or female, adult or child, who play out various scenarios in a full spectrum of emotion. Allegorical microcosms in-and-of themselves, these works are balanced by Jeon’s smaller paintings and drawings which focus more intently on individual characters and themes.
