Gijeong Goo (b. 1990) has been working on recreating real-life landscapes as digital images based on 3D rendering, and translating them into physical spaces through video and installation. Encompassing multilayered experiments with media, Goo's practice navigates the boundaries between reality and virtuality, exploring the relationships among humans, machines, and nature.

Gijeong Goo’s work has evolved from a reflection on the relationship between humans and technology in contemporary society. The artist focuses on the increasingly interdependent and complementary dynamic between the two, especially as advancements in science and technology allow for easier and more rational decision-making.
 
In his early work, Goo explored themes such as "augmented reality" and the breakdown of communication under the overwhelming influence of media. He examined how original identity is gradually lost through processes of repetition and duplication—using technologies like photocopiers, cameras, and Google Translate as tools of experimentation.  

Through this, he also developed measurement devices to retrace anonymous images, persistently seeking his own standards within the tangled web of information and competing interests.

Alongside this, Gijeong Goo has drawn attention to how human perception has shifted to rely increasingly on the rationality and efficiency of technology—while becoming more unfamiliar with handling ambiguity and uncertainty. 

Recognizing that the issue of ambiguity is likely to manifest in various forms today, as the boundary between reality and virtuality continues to blur, Goo began creating works that allow viewers to actively engage with constructed environments. These immersive settings are designed to prompt new perspectives, encouraging participants to navigate and interpret uncertainty on their own terms.

To this end, Gijeong Goo employs digital cameras and 3D graphic tools—technologies originally developed to observe situations beyond the capacity of the human eye. In his work, images of nature are digitally manipulated and combined with artificial or non-real elements, prompting viewers to continuously question what they see. 

For instance, Rendered Nature (2019) explores human experience within digital environments. By juxtaposing images of real plants with vividly patterned surfaces—resembling computer graphics—and CGI-generated plants, the work creates a subtle sense of dissonance that encourages viewers to spend more time scrutinizing the images. In doing so, they are also subjected to the uneasy interference of surrounding neon lights, which further disrupt their viewing experience.

Rather than aiming to faithfully reproduce pristine natural landscapes through technology, Gijeong Goo’s work focuses on recreating the entangled experiences of perception and understanding that arise in today’s environments, where nature and technology are deeply intertwined. 

In his 2020 solo exhibition 《Defaulted》 at N/A Gallery, Goo revealed the ways in which the images of the world we encounter through media are shaped by the intricate interventions of digital technology.

The works featured in the exhibition vividly illustrate a technologically mediated world, employing techniques such as Content Aware Fill, which smooths out flaws in two-dimensional images by referencing surrounding data, and Bump Mapping, which simulates texture by distorting the height of 3D surfaces during rendering. 

The exhibition began with a video piece exploring the gap between the virtual world presented through digital devices and the tangible world experienced through the body. It then expanded into an immersive installation by layering real photographs with image-editing software functions, presenting an augmented reality through framed images and wallpaper that transformed the space into a three-dimensional experience.

In Famous Scene (2021), presented at the convergence-based festival 《Nothing Makes Itself》 held at ARKO Art Center, Gijeong Goo captures rapidly changing landscapes shaped by overwhelming technological forces. The work visualizes the complexity of contemporary scenery as reproduced through various digital devices and media. 

For this piece, Goo photographed immersive landscapes in the Swiss city of Roche and reproduced them using a hybrid of 2D and 3D techniques—methods typically used to vividly render natural imagery—highlighting how nature is increasingly mediated through layers of technology.

To emphasize the technological characteristics that emerge through digitalization, the artist repeatedly applied effects such as noise reduction and bump mapping, intentionally creating an unnatural quality in the image. This process evokes an uncanny valley effect, prompting viewers to spend more time examining the image and to question its realism. 

In addition, Goo constructed an environment that juxtaposes real and virtual materials (such as soil and branches versus digital photographs), as well as static and dynamic imagery (printed stills versus videos displayed on monitors). This setup allows the image to unfold from multiple perspectives through the viewer’s physical movement, encouraging an active and embodied engagement with the work.

Goo’s interest in the relationship between technology–media and the human body is more fully developed in Contrology (2022). The work critiques both the idealized bodily images imposed by media and the distorted, rigid physicality shaped through bodily experiences mediated by technological devices. Through performance-based video and installation, the artist visualizes this “imbalance of the image,” revealing the tension between representation and lived embodiment.

As viewers observe the performer’s movements in the video, they become acutely aware of the stiffness in their own bodies, shaped by media environments, and begin to shift and readjust themselves. Curator Moon Hyun Jeoung notes that the work “not only offers intensified visual stimulation, but also carries a propagandistic intent—urging viewers to project their own bodies onto the figure on screen and to physically respond by moving themselves.” 

In this way, Goo’s overarching inquiry into the impact of digital media on the human body ultimately reaches the viewer’s own physical experience through the work.

Meanwhile, Gijeong Goo raises questions in MACROMACHINEPLANTINCUBATOR (2024) about how urban dwellers can remain useful to nature and sustain an attitude inspired by it, even in a state of isolation from nature. He also explores whether it is possible to transcend anthropocentrism without physically moving the body. 

This work was inspired by the relationship between a friend of the artist (a human) and their companion plants (non-humans) in a small studio space inside an urban building. The artist photographed and 3D scaned the companion plants, collecting high-resolution data to create images. The images of TV and structures are then framed within actual screens, juxtaposing real and virtual imagery to induce a meditative immersion in the viewer.

Through this, the artist questions the gap between experiencing meditative nature and the cycle of utilizing what is given in urban environments, such as digital devices and human technological design. He aims to deconstruct and reconstruct digital nature in the most urban manner.

In this way, Gijeong Goo’s work evokes an ambiguous sensibility situated on the boundary between reality and virtuality by processing real landscapes through digital technology. Focusing on the physical senses of humans that have become embodied within digital technologies, Goo creates immersive experiences that prompt viewers to physically perceive the blurred space between the real and the virtual—and to encounter the familiar in unfamiliar ways.

 “I wanted to create confusion—whether the image is derived from reality or if it’s computer-generated but appears real. Within that confusion, I hope viewers spend more time contemplating their own perception or the devices they use in order to grasp the nature of the image.”  (Gijeong Goo, from an artist interview for 《SeMA Anthology: Ten Enchanting Spells》, Seoul Museum of Art)

Gijeong Goo holds a BFA in Communication Design from Hongik University and an MA in Photography from ECAL/École cantonale d'art de Lausanne. His recent solo exhibitions include 《Route 0》 (Seoho Museum of Modern Art, Namyangju, 2024), 《Exceeded Scenes》 (Gwanghwamun Square, Seoul, 2023), 《Contrology》 (Hall1, Seoul, 2022), and 《Defaulted》 (N/A, Seoul, 2020).
 
He has also actively participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Korea and abroad, including 《At The End of The World Split Endlessly》 (Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), 《Hybrid Landscape is Isolated》 (Thematic Pavilion, Malta Biennale, National Museum of Archaeology, Valletta, 2024), 《SeMA Anthology: Ten Enchanting Spells》 (Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023), 《Get Set》 (Dutch Design Week, Strijp-T, Eindhoven, 2022), 《Nothing Makes Itself》 (ARKO Art Center, Seoul, 2021), and 《Mirage Club》 (Paris Photo, 24 Rue Beaubourg, Paris, 2018). 

Goo was an artist-in-residence at the Seoul Museum of Art Nanji Residency (2024) and selected as a 2025 Zero1ne Creator by Hyundai Motors. He was also chosen as a Thematic Pavilion Artist at the 2024 Malta Biennale (MUZA, Under the Patronage of UNESCO) and a recipient of the 2024 Hyundai Future-net Media Art Project Grant.

References

• 구기정, Gijeong Goo (Artist Website)
• 비애티튜드, 3D로 빚어낸 불확실성의 세계
• 라라앤, <ㄷ ㄷ ㄷ> 작고 소개 – 구기정, 2021.07.02
• N/A,  Defaulted
• 문현정, 구기정 개인전 ‘Contrology’ 비평글 - 미디어 문법, 응고된 신체를 자각하기 위한 장으로서의 Contrology
• 서울시립미술관, SeMA 옴니버스 《끝없이 갈라지는 세계의 끝에서》 - 구기정, 〈미세기계생명배양장치〉 (Seoul Museum of Art, SeMA SeMA Omnibus : At the End of the World Split Endlessly - Gijeong Goo, MACROMACHINEPLANTINCUBATOR)