ARTIST STATEMENT

 In her large-scale video installations, new media artist Daphne Jiyeon Jang uses 3D animation, video projection and spatial mapping, to bring new meaning to classical sculptures. Using self-generated 3D models Jang hopes to ‘unfreeze’ the fixed identity and meaning of historical works, by reanimating these classical artefacts in the present. Constructing a virtual space within which classical sculptures are able to move and gesture, Jang’s ‘moving sculptures’, are designed to unravel the frozen time of antiquity and hint at hidden narrative meanings in the past, that still reverberates in the present.  Jang’s hope is that the works will possess an emotional power that will engage the viewer, inviting them to reconsider the nature of the past and the relevance and importance of classical, mythic stories and tales in contemporary culture.

The meaning of Jang ji-yeon’s artwork lies in the context of unique way of glaring human body. As Michael Talbot wrote in the “holographic universe”, our body is just a medium where we can meet the world, not our possession. Jang ji-yeon shows the moment of switch, from when we merely ‘see’ the summation of reality, to the moment when we actually can ‘feel’ it.

– Cho kwan Yong (Art Critic)