Jieun Cheon
Jieun Cheon’s work, Uncanished Workld—An Epistemological Inquiry, consists of a series of installations that mirror how humans perceive and interpret the world, reflecting the dual process of understanding both the external environment and the internal self. These works synthesize drawing, sculpture, painting, printmaking, text, and various craft methods. Through her practice, she addresses the coexistence of paradoxical ideas—order and chaos, life and death, peace and turbulence. Cheon created Uncanished Workld, a fictional universe named for its dual nature: uncanny, as rationality fails to fully grasp reality, and unfinished, as the pursuit of understanding never ends. Each installation serves as a chapter describing a specific aspect of the work, such as space or time, through scientific diagrams, religious iconography, and mythological imagery, all reconfigured into a system that resists comprehension.
In 2024, The Anti-Fractal Map presents intricate pen drawings and watercolor paintings on sheets of silk. The drawings resemble labyrinthine maps, exploring the contradiction between order and chaos. Gothic arches, façades, gravestones, and plants are modulated by a geometric grid inspired by fractal theory. Beneath the structured shapes lie inconsistent spaces and irregular forms, reflecting how her rational faculty struggles to comprehend capricious reality. In 2025, The Calendar of the Permutations of 1000 Arms consists of ten panels of pen drawings, ten panels of acrylic paintings, and sculptural elements made of brass and quartz. The drawings depict arm-bone structures by deconstructing the minerals forming the arms, while the paintings portray decaying flesh through various red hues. Like a calendar, the panels trace the passage of time, embodying the life cycle through its dual extremes—formation and decay. Ultimately, Cheon’s work questions the limits of knowledge, the need for faith, and the tension between order and chaos. Through this project, she explores how belief systems—religious, scientific, or mythological—both approach and depart from understanding Uncanished Workld, which, like the phrase itself, remains described but impossible to fully articulate.
