Emotion Craft by Yeon Jong Jeong
Opening Thursday May 21st from 5-9 pm
Continued Viewing May 22 & 23rd from 3-7 pm
Emotion Craft is a series of sculptural projects that use emotions as the primary material. To carry out the first phase of the project, I take to the streets, pulling a mobile sculptural work that resembles a street vendor’s cart, which I created myself.
I call it a device.
When I go out with the device, I dress like a peddler or a fortune teller. Perhaps it is also fine if I look like a swindler or a magician.
Doubt and goodwill must coexist, but they should never reconcile or harmonize. I want my silhouette to shift between that of a dog and a wolf.
The moment I leave my studio marks the beginning of the journey. In the urban landscape of New York, the movement to the point where I conduct the performance—what I call a transaction—is also a form of laborious work.
What I trade in is emotion.
I receive customers’ thoughts or emotions as the price of the transaction. In return, I offer them a game through which they can obtain an unspecified new emotion. Customers can either accept or reject the emotion that emerges from the game. However, according to the pre-announced terms, the thoughts and emotions they have already paid cannot be refunded. I stamp them with a seal that says "Paid," signifying the completion of payment. And through this exchange, I collect their thoughts and emotions.
This act is certainly not art therapy or a charitable service. They have paid a price, in one way or another, for their participation.
Most customers gladly accepted their new emotions. But on Halloween night, a child asked me,
“So where do the thoughts I paid go?”
I did not answer.
The latter half of Emotion Craft takes place in my studio. I preserve the collected thoughts and emotions. I also use them as subjects and materials to create sculptures that resemble craftwork. It is as if I were commissioned to craft these pieces.
I do not wish to replicate myself. I am not curious about who I am.
People’s thoughts and emotions are radiant. They are precious. I am not on their side. I simply continue to collect and sculpt.
Yeon Jong Jeong (he/him) is a Brooklyn-based sculptor born in Daegu, South Korea, in 1991. After earning his BFA and MFA in Sculpture from Hongik University, he explored themes of loneliness and nomadism through large-scale outdoor installations and indoor works utilizing diverse objects. In 2023, Jeong relocated to New York, where he is now pursuing an MFA at Pratt Institute. His current practice centers on a public art series titled "Emotion Craft," where he treats emotions as currencies or commodities, collecting and transforming them into sculptural forms. At the heart of this series is a mobile cart-like device that symbolizes the exchange of emotions. Alongside this, another body of work investigates ephemerality, addressing the transient nature of existence and the themes of unsettled nomadism across time and space. Recently, he has begun working on a new project titled "A Journey to Nowhere," further expanding his exploration of human emotions and impermanence.
