In the artist Jaemin’s paintings, bodies span the entire canvas—stretched out under a tree, hugging flowers, or dancing in water—in diverse postures. Jaemin, whose artwork is of familiar subject matter, seems to be depicting the everyday. The people in her paintings are engaged in various actions, such as running around with flowers in hand or diving while dressed in a swimsuit. The scenes are too mundane to be special but manage to hold the viewer’s gaze with an unusual element that defies classification as “ordinary.” What is the source of this contradictory impression?
Although Jaemin’s subject matter may be familiar elements of nature (e.g. trees, flowers, bodies of water), in an urban setting, where daily routines are always fixed, it is not at all common to see someone running while holding armfuls of flowers or navigating a field of tall grass. The paintings, which seem to be snapshots of a normal day, are actually much closer to things you would see in a faraway country. Something that is ordinary for one person may be exotic to someone else: indeed, her paintings manage to present an otherwise unremarkable place in a way that makes it seem unfamiliar to the viewer. By portraying the places that lie in the netherworld between the everyday and a unique, one-time event (i.e. travel), she questions the tools that a human being needs to explore one’s world.
Lee Minju