Hyunsun Jeon A Small Flame, 2025

Hyunsun Jeon's new series of fabric-covered sculptures are assembled from multicolored pieces of fabric. The different shapes, among them triangles, circles, columns, and rectangles, recall the geometric shapes that are prominent in her painted imagery. They feature bright appliqués sewn on, such as crisscrossing stripes of cloth, arrows, and figurative elements, such as open eyes, closed eyes, and eyes caught in mid-blink, as well as small flames. Similar to the aesthetic and formal vocabulary created by Jeon in her paintings, the sculptures extend that vision into the world.

The materiality of these objects, with their soft indentations, gives the works a distinctly whimsical presence in space. As they squish and sag, one senses gravity; yet, their shapes also provoke strange associations with emotions. Placed around Jeon's more strictly linear, two-dimensional paintings, the felt sculptures take on quirky personalities as if interacting with or observing the other works, like us. This quality can be traced back to the origin of the works. The artist developed the idea for these sculptures from the small felt dolls she has been making for some time.