![Geumhyung Jeong, Under Construction [ICA London installation], 2024. Photo: Rob Harris](https://www.culturecalling.com/images/uploads/header_images/ICA_Rush_24_September_2024_%28Low_Res%29-10_%281%29742.jpg)
Groundbreaking solo exhibition exploring the relationship between humans and machines.
This autumn, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA) presents Under Construction, a solo exhibition by Geumhyung Jeong (b. 1980, Seoul). Working from her background in choreography and a studied interest in the role of objects and technology in our lives, Jeong uses her body and animatronic figures built from DIY parts to parse the uncanny relationships between people and machines.
In her past work, Jeong has animated self-constructed remote-controlled robots using mechanical and tech hardware tools and spare mannequin parts and medical dummies. With this new exhibition in the ICA’s lower galleries, Jeong expands her ongoing project, Under Construction, incorporating complete human skeleton models as a central component of the work.
Jeong constructs, cares for, and communicates with these homemade robot partners through an intimate dialogue of gestures and choreographed movements, evidenced in in-person performances and video installation. Under Construction will explore the link between humans and machines through autonomous sculptures, in-process constructions, and videos that both document actions between Jeong and the skeleton-machines, and the artist’s tender creation and maintenance of the work. These videos unfold the life of these forms, documenting the halting trial and error of Jeong’s developing constructions. As in the performances, the sculptures in the videos – more co-performers than objects – act in a clumsy, unreliable and human-like manner, soliciting an ambiguous empathy from the viewer.
Jeong’s installation offers a proposal for the active life of sculpture in a public institution. The artist will perform in-person with her figural machines multiple times during the run of the exhibition (dates to be announced), reimagining and shifting the installation. Jeong’s work work represents a nuanced investigation of global techno-capitalism, addressing human relationships with our technological counterparts through care and mutual exchange. Jeong addresses this fundamental component of our appended human society in a way only sculpture can – by addressing the physical relationships in space that underline our connection to objects as active agents.
Performance dates: 8th October, 9th October, 13th November & a performative lecture on 15 November.
Tickets: ICA | Institute of Contemporary Arts