Jung Yeon Min’s works are highly imaginative and rich. One finds multiple worlds, the extraordinary and the realistic, notions of micro and macro, and manipulations of space and time in her work. Specifically, her work offers two equal but divergent investigations. On the one hand, she envisions and explores a mysterious and fantastical world. In a separate but concurrent investigation, she examines the effect of time in the pictorial realm. Sometimes colliding, these two points of inquiry form an intriguing basis for a closer reading of Min’s works as opening up places of potential and possibility.

In the realm between the real and the virtual her paintings present imaginary worlds asking us to search for their specific force, their capacity for rupturing and transforming life. Tracing this force within her works offers an understanding of what her artwork achieves and her vision of our potential. Understanding her virtual world involves questioning the very possibilities of life. Min does not want us to see her worlds simply as familiar experiences; while she uses perspective as a technique to produce a sense of comfort and familiarity, she jolts us with a sense of the strange at the same time. Her paintings show Min’s integration of the familiar world with that of the strange. While she uses perspective to demarcate the division between the world that we know and the virtual world, she emphasizes seeing strangeness in an environment that is known and safe. By displaying various perspectives of time and temporality in many of her works, she seems to interrogate the concept of time and its effects. We are left questioning, what in the painting is waiting for a transformation to occur? Min never settles this question for us, leaving us unsettled about what exactly we are supposed to seeing, what we are supposed to be waiting for. Thus, she disturbs our conventional understanding of time as a progression, from one event or occurrence to another, to a more multi-layered perspective. The presence of realism allows the fantastical world to make sense, so what would otherwise seem strange becomes familiar and inviting. She disarms resistance to this otherness, change and difference. Her worlds offer a way of being that breaks out of boundaries, both geographical and temporal, and that challenges us to envision a life beyond convention.

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Jung-Yeon Min awarded exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole, France

25 February – 22 April 2012
The Prize of the Partners of the Saint-Etienne Métropole Museum of Modern Art was unanimously awarded (for the third time) to Min Jung-Yeon (born in 1979 in Gwang Ju, South Korea). The jury particularly appreciated the originality and authenticity of her creative universe and the coherence of her pictoral and graphic work since graduating from the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris in 2006.

TROISIEME PRIX DU CLUB DES PARTENAIRES

Le 3ème Prix des Partenaires du Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole a été attribué à l’unanimité à MIN Jung-Yeon (née en 1979 à Gwang Ju en Corée du Sud). Il lui a été décerné, parmi une liste de 7 artistes proposés par le musée, par un jury composé deNicole Dupain (journaliste Le Progrès - Saint-Etienne), Florence Meyssonnier (rédactrice en chef de 04 et coordinatrice de la BF15 - Lyon), Henri-François Debailleux (journaliste Libération), Lorand Hegyi (Directeur général du Musée d’Art Moderne) et Didier Michel (Président du Club des Partenaires).

Le jury a particulièrement apprécié l’originalité et l’authenticité de son univers créatif et la cohérence de son travail pictural et graphique depuis sa sortie de l’Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris en 2006. Il lui a paru également intéressant et cohérent de soutenir une artiste d’origine asiatique, le Musée présentant régulièrement des créateurs venus de cette région du monde. Le travail de l’artiste avait été repéré au salon du dessin contemporain "Drawing Now Paris en mars" 2011 à la Galerie Maria Lund.

Le Club des Partenaires du Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole, créé fin 2006 et qui regroupe une dizaine d’entreprises mécènes de la région stéphanoise, a pour objectif de contribuer au rayonnement du Musée par différentes actions de communication et de soutien aux activités artistiques. En 2009, il a créé le Prix des Partenaires afin de soutenir la carrière d’un jeune artiste qui vit et travaille en France. Ce prix est doté d’une exposition au Musée d’Art Moderne accompagnée d’une publication. Concentré sur le dessin, ce prix prolonge la politique de soutien à ce médium régulièrement présent dans les expositions du Musée et par les acquisitions du Club. Marina Perez Simao et Anne Laure Sacriste ont été les deux premières lauréates en 2009 et 2010.