reviews > Chicago, IL

Hyun Jung Jun
Hyun Jung Jun

It can take me hours to prepare a meal that my family consumes in fifteen minutes. That’s okay, not everything in life must total an equivalent end product. Many such unequal-seeming equations explain the output of Hyun Jung Jun: elaborately lumpy candles, an endless list of active verbs, eggshells that sprout nasturtiums. She has cut and markered hundreds of shiny little strawberries in a rainbow of colors, written words in a carpet of dirt, tenderly enlarged old grocery lists. Cats lurk in her paintings, of course, because cats are both otherworldly and totally quotidian, marvelously languid and terrifyingly fast. How it all fits together is how it all fits together: not everything can or must make perfect sense. Two hours of cooking does not equal two hours of eating. Except when it does.

—Lori Waxman 2020-02-15 4:09 PM