Photo images have been the subject matter of artist Jang Bo-yun’s works for many years. Series works started in 2011 titled and clearly show an intimate relationship between the artist and the image, which functions as the subject matter. These series came from the private records of a character name Lisa, whom a visitor incidentally passed onto the artist while she was in New York residency program. Records include the nursing diary of Lisa’s mother as well as the scrapbook of Lisa’s adolescence. Artist repeatedly writes a part from the nursing diary; writing changes into a verbal language and the process replaces the lost image. Ultimately, Jang Bo-yun visits Poughkeepsie, a small town in New York to work on her art piece . During this trip to Poughkeepsie, she experiences herself being a stranger in an unfamiliar place when she tries as hard as she can to reach the time of Lisa. The title of this exhibition quoted one newspaper obituary that Lisa kept; this is, on the other hand, a way of expressing artist herself familiarizing to the loss of the images that cannot be recovered. 

For the recent exhibition at window gallery, artist returned to the same vein of series works in New York and brought Lisa’s images back again. Like the title implies, three photos recall character’s youth to the public. However, explanations on the images as well as the relationship between them are both vague. Even the provenance is not accurate. Representative photos that are out of focus and frame deal with obscurity of an image that functions as a medium. Nonetheless, as piling up of vagueness that is paradoxically distancing itself from specific meaning, the closer we get to our experiences. What she hopes to protect lies on the common experience of something we lost; she does not cling onto the limited language nor an image itself, which are granted as compensation. In spite of this skeptical but progressive attitude of an artist on the medium, it is surprising that these artworks somehow give the public a sense of relief as well as an aesthetic balance. Maybe Jang Bo-yun is inviting you to a new space that no one could ever experience. 
- Doohee Lee

*image (left)
© Boyun Jang
courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hyundai