Eugene Jung (b.1995) creates post-apocalyptic environments through sculpture and installation that respond to contemporary catastrophes. The desolate landscapes crafted by the artist are at times infused with a cartoon-like worldview. Through this, Jung contemplates how disasters today are visualized, consumed, and perceived through media and popular culture.

Eugene Jung has long been interested in scenes of disaster and catastrophe shared across popular media, including comics, and has explored these themes using fragile and brittle materials. In her first solo exhibition, 《At least, Realistic》 (2019), held at Site of Chuohonsen Gallery in Tokyo, she recreated the ruins of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake using flimsy and delicate materials such as plastic boxes.

For the work, the artist received photographs of the earthquake ruins from a friend and used them as references to reconstruct the camera-captured landscapes within the exhibition space using lightweight materials. Next to the recreated, artificial ruins, she placed an iPad displaying the original images she had received, allowing viewers to compare the actual photographs with the sculptural installation.

However, the reality fixed as records within the screen becomes entangled with the fabricated ruin structures. As a result, it becomes difficult to distinguish whether the scenes originated from real life, were staged, or are entirely fictitious.

Around the recreated ruin scene stands Dustwall (2017), a loosely stacked structure made of stone-patterned paper. These brick-like forms, crafted from thin paper, are so fragile that they can barely stand without support, embodying a precarious and easily collapsible durability.

The image of Dustwall does not originate from any specific source or context. It simply consists of concrete textures commonly found on the internet, printed onto paper—lacking any inherent meaning or narrative. However, once placed within the context of an exhibition about the Great East Japan Earthquake, this otherwise directionless sculpture becomes a mediator that evokes the devastated landscapes of the disaster.

Through this, Eugene Jung reveals the relationship between reality, its reproduced versions, and artificiality, while also exploring how real-life catastrophes are consumed and perceived as spectacle when mediated through various channels. Her lightweight sculptures underscore how the representation of disaster is inevitably distorted by media and question the very possibility of faithfully reproducing such traumatic events.

Meanwhile, the object-structure Mercilesspilla (2019), made using common construction materials found in everyday life, draws inspiration from a depiction of Chernobyl in a comic book. Eugene Jung references a scene she read in a comic at the library, in which a white pillar of fire rose into the sky due to the high radiation levels following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She was struck by the visual spectacle of this image and sought to bring it into physical reality.

In an attempt to materialize the imagery expressed on the pages of the comic, the artist translated the sensory qualities of the illustrated scene into the physical world by selecting materials that could best embody its visual and emotional impact, thus reconstructing the event on a material level.

Having long reflected on how real-world disasters are represented and consumed through media, Eugene Jung eventually chose to step beyond mediated imagery and enter the sites of catastrophe herself. To do so, she began documenting her visits to these disaster-stricken locations through a series of documentary videos.

One such work, Pirated Future (2019), is a video piece that chronicles the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear explosion and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in a documentary format. At these sites, the artist maintained a careful distance while slowly capturing the post-disaster landscapes. Rather than portraying the scenes of catastrophe typically shown in the media, her footage reveals a more subdued reality—one that moves and changes gradually over time.

Through interviews with local residents who express hope for a return to normalcy, Jung challenges the fixed, static imagery of disaster. Instead, she reintroduces these moments into a living, present-tense reality—one that is still unfolding.

Eugene Jung’s work, which had previously dealt with disasters she did not experience firsthand—such as the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Chernobyl nuclear explosion—entered a new phase with the emergence of COVID-19, a global catastrophe. Her 2022 solo exhibition 《Run》 at Museumhead reflects the artist’s contemplation on a present moment in which disasters, though deeply embedded in daily life, continue to be replicated and consumed.

Today, war, viruses, and climate-induced natural disasters no longer occur in distant places—they unfold within the very environments we inhabit. Yet the signs and events of disaster appearing everywhere are often reduced to numerical data or flattened into screen-bound images, stripping them of their immediacy and weight. Despite being in the midst of ongoing crises, it has become increasingly easy to retreat into the digital world or remain passive observers.

Eugene Jung sought to materially reconstruct today’s disaster experiences—overflowing with virtuality—and to evoke a bodily experience from the viewer within them. To do this, she combined and exaggerated scenes of everyday disasters to create a theme-park-like environment within the exhibition space.

Fortune Earth (2022), installed in the courtyard at the entrance of the gallery, featured the fragmented remains of a massive dismantled globe, suggesting the onset of an impending catastrophe. Inside the exhibition space, barricade-like structures evoked restriction and control, reminiscent of the long queues outside temporary COVID-19 testing centers.

The exhibition space was also filled with various disaster-evoking images and materials: severed roller coaster structures, checkpoint facilities used to control vehicles or block escape routes, and acrylic partitions plastered with disaster imagery and drawings. These objects collectively conjured fragmented yet familiar scenes of catastrophe.

In this way, the exhibition intertwined different temporal and spatial layers of disaster through camouflaged materials and objects. By actively replicating the perception of contemporary disaster, these staged elements guided the audience’s movement and choreographed their bodies into a collective rhythm—subtly revealing the limits of where the body can reach today.

In the group exhibition 《To You: Move Toward There You Are》 held at ARKO Art Center in 2022, the large-scale rollercoaster-shaped installation Round and Round (2022) explores the notion of movement in the aftermath of the pandemic.

After the onset of the pandemic, airlines and duty-free industries introduced “non-landing flights” as a strategy to save on fuel and parking fees, as international travel became difficult. The artist saw this looped flight—marketed as an event and designed to promote duty-free shopping—as resembling a rollercoaster that endlessly returns without ever settling.

Both the non-landing flight and the rollercoaster, which repeat their highs and lows for fleeting pleasure, reflect a movement for the sake of movement itself—one that aligns with a system determined to sustain the flow of consumption.

Meanwhile, Jung’s large-scale installation W????W (Waves of Wreckage) (2024), presented at the 2024 Busan Biennale 《Seeing in the Dark》, reconstructs a shipwreck-like landscape using debris taken from dismantled gallery partition walls. This scene of ruin also references a real-world disaster—the Great East Japan Earthquake.

The shattered walls and traces of dismantling scattered across the floor evoke a sense of instability, swaying like massive, unsteady waves, reminiscent of our current precarious reality. Though the ruins are reconstructed in another time and space, the raw traces of familiar objects embedded in the wreckage overlap with the here-and-now, evoking a heightened sense of realism.

In the group exhibition 《Nostalgics on realities》 (2024) at Thaddaeus Ropac, Eugene Jung presented the ‘Earthmovers’ (2024) series, which shifts focus from the destructive images of disasters to the process of reconstruction that follows. Created in response to the movements of recovery and reconstruction following the pandemic, this series recreates landscapes where ruin and renewal intersect through the depiction of heavy machinery such as excavators, dump trucks, and bulldozers.

The use of rusted surfaces, plastic cords, and paper alongside the machinery creates a layered image of construction sites and disaster scenarios, while also revealing the movement toward recovery and renewal.

In this way, Eugene Jung has started to focus on how the disasters of others or distant places are consumed and shared in the post-internet age, and now speaks about the new global-scale disasters that have become personal experiences for everyone.

Jung reveals the superficial experiences of disaster mediated through today’s media and popular culture, as well as the living traces that stir beneath the surface, materializing and contemporizing disaster imagery within the here-and-now. Eugene Jung's quasi-reality landscapes allow us to re-sense and properly gaze at the reality we are currently living in.

”Most images of explosions that appear in cartoons or virtual images are vast and intimidating […] I think that the fake landscapes of ruins I create are ultimately reflecting the reality we live in.” (Eugene Jung, from an interview with Thaddaeus Ropac) 

Eugene Jung received her BFA and MFA in Fine Art at Korea National University of Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include 《Boxing Sketch》 (Shimjae Boxing Studio, Seoul, 2024), 《Run》 (Museumhead, Seoul, 2022), and 《Pirated Future+Doomsday Garden》 (Art Sonje Center Art Hall, Seoul, 2019).

Jung has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, such as 《PLAY》 (LeRoy Neiman Gallery, New York, 2025), the 2024 Busan Biennale 《Seeing in the Dark》 (Busan, 2024), 《Nostalgics on realities》 (Thaddaeus Ropac, Seoul, 2024), 《To You: Move Toward There You Are》 (ARKO Art Center, Seoul, 2022), 《Short Circuit》 (Taste house, Seoul, 2021), and 《Your Search, On-demand Research Service》 (Doosan Gallery, Seoul, 2019).

In addition, Eugene Jung participated in the Friend of a Friend residency program (Poconos, Pennsylvania, USA, 2023), White Letters (Barim & Sapporo Tenjinyama Art Studio, Korea and Japan, 2021), and the Site of Chuohonsen Gallery Residency Program (2019). She was selected in the "Art & Photography" category of Dazed 100 Asia in 2024, marking a significant moment in her recognition as a rising young artist to watch.

References

• 정유진, Eugene Jung (Artist Website) 
• 와우산타이핑클럽, 있어 보이(기만 하)는 것들: 기록의 파탄을 예기하는 허물로서의 이미지 – 콘노 유키
• 월간미술, 염하연 – 재난의 비경
• 뮤지엄헤드, [서문] Run – 권혁규 (Museumhead, [Preface] Run – Hyukgue Kwon)
• 아르코미술관, 투 유: 당신의 방향 (ARKO Art Center, To You: Move Toward Where You Are)
• 2024 부산비엔날레, 정유진 (2024 Busan Biennale, Eugene Jung)
• 타데우스 로팍, 노스탤직스 온 리얼리티 (Thaddaeus Ropac, Nostalgics on realities)
• 서울경제, 한국의 숨은 보석 6人, 시간의 파편을 그리다, 2024.02.04