Salon DDESSIN Paris — Solo show — Yoon Ji-Eun — Maria Lund Gallery — Fair — Slash Paris

Past: September 18 → 20, 2020

DDESSIN — Paris contemporary drawing fair — Atelier Richelieu (60 rue Richelieu, Paris)

The notion of time has become indispensable and very present in my work, especially the concept of synchronicity.
According to Carl Gustav Jung, “synchronicity is the simultaneous occurrence of at least two events
that cannot be explained by cause, but whose association is meaningful to the observer”.

Yoon Ji-Eun

———

Winner of the 2019 DDESSIN Prize in 2019, Yoon Ji-Eun spent the month of February 2020 as an artist in residency at the French Institute of Saint-Louis (Senegal) where she was invited as part of the prize. There, she worked on a project entitled Saint-Louis dans ma tête — Synchronicités (Saint-Louis in my head — Synchronicities), that she had started in Paris before leaving. The created works were made in two stages. They are the confrontation on paper of the projected idea of this place she did not know and the reality of discovering it. Two mental and emotional realities, two geographic realities; several forms of expression are thus reunited in each drawing. A big praxinoscope — created in collaboration with the craftsman Demba Sow — also came to life.

The confrontation between this place so different from her native Korea and from her everyday life in France made a strong impression on Yoon Ji-Eun. It produced a real turning point in her work, that asserted itself during the period of confinement that followed. Yoon Ji-Eun’s new works are striking because of their strong luminosity, a new palette and the part given to abstraction. One is reminded of the crystalline atmospheres of some of Paul Klee’s North-African works. Yoon Ji-Eun has created fields of colour that resemble visions that come to us when faced with a blinding sun. From these visions, figurative structures and fragments without a precise identity and a collage-like aspect appear. They form through the silent flow of time. This flow has no real breaks, apart from those moments where an event or a thought reminds us of time going by. Horizontal stripes punctuate the surfaces such as strata; strata that are also manifest in the wood that Yoon Ji-Eun works with as well. A blurry ambiance and the vibrant edges of colour strokes underline the notion of a never-ending flow; time has turned to liquid…The works seem to express a transformation where events are immediately absorbed before being followed by others. The rich palette is one of warm, delicate pastel tones where darker colours appear from time to time, offering their fair share of nameless fragments.

The 2019 DDESSIN Prize was awarded to Yoon Ji-Eun not only based on her drawings on paper but also for her work on stratified wood. With this unusual material, the artist draws, sculpts, juxtaposes — in 3D and in 2D. Whatever the medium, her works give life to time, place and action simultaneities, which — without having any real connection — are meaningful to the individual. It is about visually transposing a complex temporality where space, mind, body, matter, past and present are constantly interacting.

b a c k g r o u n d

Yoon Ji-Eun (born in 1982, South Korea) graduated in fine arts (Hongik University, Seoul, 2003 and ENSBA, Paris, 2005).
The artist has been exhibiting regularly in Europe and in her native country for over ten years. Her work was selected for the 55th Salon de Montrouge (2009) and for the event Jeune Création in Paris (2010), as well as for the David-Weil Drawing Prize (2008). In 2012, the Maison des Arts de Créteil welcomed a solo exhibition of her work: What I do (not) find in her. The collaboration with the GALERIE MARIA LUND started in 2012 with her participation in the group exhibitions Archipelago and 12×12, followed the next year by her solo show Mirages (2013) and her participation in Here comes the sun (2015). In 2018, Yoon Ji-Eun took part in the exhibition Artist and Location at the CICA Museum, Gyeonggi- do, South Korea.
A selection of Yoon Ji-Eun’s works was presented at the ART ON PAPER 2013 fair in Brussels, as well as at the YIA ART FAIR, Paris (2015) and YIA ART FAIR, Brussels (2016), at ASIA NOW (2019) and at D-DESSIN 2019 where she was awarded the fair’s prize.