(Performance) Spa & Beauty - Geumhyung Jeong

Kiang Malingue is pleased to present "Spa & Beauty", two performances by Geumhyung Jeong at its Tin Wan location, coinciding with an exhibition by the artist that runs from 7th through 14th December, featuring newly-made mannequins, props, videos and a number of modified sundries used in daily routines.

Jeong's body of work ranges from performance, dance, choreography, theatre, video and installation. Since the beginning of her career, she has been investigating the relationship between the human body, the objects that are immediately associated with it, and its artificial counterparts through productions that combine languages and techniques from the fields of contemporary dance, puppet theatre, self-taught programming, and the visual arts. In the course of the physical interaction between her body and the objects, it becomes ambiguous who controls whom, blurring the line between inanimate and animate, the inauthentic and the genuine.

"Spa & Beauty" was first presented at Tate Modern in London in 2017 and has since toured cities including Berlin, Seoul, Madrid, and Vienna. The forthcoming exhibition at Kiang Malingue's Tin Wan space is a new reiteration of the evolving project, exploring the relationship of body-objects, highlighting the tactility of a type of highly industrialised care manifested in beauty and body care products. Shifting her focus from the uncanny quality of programmed, playable artificial limbs shown in monumental installations such as Toy Prototype (2021), which was included in the 59th Venice Biennale, "Spa & Beauty" is less robotic, softer, sensual and haptic: brushes, sponges, soaps and all the objects that touch our naked body on a daily basis form a disconcerting display, creating a narrative that invites one to reconsider ideas of beauty, intimacy and consumption. The two scheduled performances on the 7th and 14th of December 2024 are effectively a series of demonstrations, in which the artist, treating her body as a medium par excellence, activates the modern artefacts by using them in particular, even idiosyncratic ways, shedding light on the sprays, bottles, bathtubs, and the pleasure of consuming and touching.

(About the artist)

Geumhyung Jeong was born in 1980 in Seoul. She studied Acting at Hoseo University in Asan, Dance and Performance at the Korean National University of Arts and Film Animation at the Korean Academy of Film Arts in Seoul. Since the 2000s, she has participated in many performing arts festivals including ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna (2022, 2014); Frankfurt Positions, Mousonturm, Frankfurt (2021), has presented solo exhibitions at institutions such as ICA, London (2024); FMAV Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, Modena (2020); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2019), and Tate Modern, London (2017). She has also participated in group exhibitions such as the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice (2022); The 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Ekaterinburg (2019); The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (2018); The 6th Athens Biennale, Athens (2018); and the New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York (2015).

Host or Publisher Kiang Malingue