Painting Practice as Network: The interoperability of contemporary painting
This practice-based research re-articulates the correlation between a physical painting and its on-screen image in the context of today’s post-internet painting practice. Since its inception, the term ‘post-Internet art’ (Olson, 2008) has been defined in various ways (Connor, 2015; Kholeif, 2021) in response to the developing relationship between contemporary art practice and the digital network. Despite the ‘opacity’ of the current online environment, in which the context of user-created content is manipulated by social media (Lanier, 2018), paintings are presented and circulated through the online platforms in the form of images, which ‘act and catalyze actions’ (Steyerl, 2021) regardless of the painter’s intention for the works.
I use my painting practice as the central method of this research. I make paintings in the studio and examine both the outcomes and the processes involved. I also re-examine the processes through the lens of ‘computational thinking’ (Wing, 2010) by translating them into a procedural programming language. I use my solo exhibition to lead and evidence the development of an online proxy for a painting in a real-life setting.
The proxy offers the painter a way of building the context of their own work online. To utilise the internet as the ‘ground’ of painting through which to exploit the ‘image power […] derived from networks’ (Joselit, 2013), I refer to Berners-Lee’s (1994) idea of the ‘Semantic Web’, which is a combination of ‘machine-readable Web content’ and ‘automated services’. I adopt metadata schemas, which are, importantly, readable and writable by both humans and machines, as a ‘common language’ and ‘proper standard’ (Haraway, 1991) to construct a ‘joint’ that can ‘accommodate and manage heterogeneous elements’ in a network (Galloway, 2021). The joint, consisting of a painting’s metadata, not only contextualises the painting’s online content available in various formats but also interconnects these into a network, which serves as the work’s online proxy. Working closely with search engines, the proxy enables the interoperability of painting for both the painter and the viewer.
I redefine the painting-canvas as a sensuous interface by which painters can realise the ‘rhythmic unity of the senses’ (Deleuze, 2003). Combining both Ash’s (2015) notion of the interface and Latour’s (2011) notion of the network I construct a conceptual framework – an ‘interface for the network of painting practice’, through which the painter can remap their painting practice as a ‘distributed network’ (Joselit, 2013). Using Galloway’s (2021) idea of ‘holes’ in the network, they can ‘embrace the chaos’ (Deleuze, 2003) of newly discovered and unpredictable outcomes of the painting process.
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Biography
Born in 1977 in South Korea, Seungjo Jeong was a former software engineer before he decided to change his career to art. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA (2015), and a MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, UK (2017), where he is in the final stage of his PhD in the Arts and Humanities.
Jeong currently lives and works in London where he has participated in numerous exhibitions including Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2016), John Moores Painting Prize at Walker Art Gallery as part of Liverpool Biennial (2018) and Contemporary British Painting Prize at Huddersfield Art Gallery (2022). Jeong was the recipient of New Contemporaries Studio Bursary in partnership with One Thoresby Street in Nottingham (2018) and the British Institution Awards for Students at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (2019).
Degrees
MA in Painting, Royal College of Art, 2017
BFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA, 2015
Awards
The RCA Research Placement, Royal College of Art, 2022
Conference Travel Fund, Royal College of Art, 2021
The British Institution Awards for Students, Royal Academy of Arts, 2019
New Contemporaries’ Studio Bursary with One Thoresby Street, 2017
Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2016
Bluewolf / RCA Art Installation Scholarship, 2016
Exhibitions
RCA Research Biennale. Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2025
Viva Exhibition. Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2024
Hopscotch: RCA Research Biennale. Copeland Gallery, London, UK, 2023
Contemporary British Painting Prize. Thames-side Gallery, London, UK, 2022
Contemporary British Painting Prize. Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield, UK, 2022
Exeter Contemporary Open. Phoenix Gallery, Exeter, UK, 2022
Unruly Encounters. Lake Gallery, Southwark Park Galleries, London, UK, 2022
Plymouth Contemporary. The Levinsky Gallery, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK, 2021
RCA Research Biennale. Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2021
RHA Annual Exhibition (by invitation). Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland, 2020
2084. The Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2020
NAE Open. New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK, 2019
Summer Exhibition. Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK, 2019
There's something lurking in the shadows that might be interesting. The Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2019
I Scared My Computer. White City Place, London, UK, 2019
End of Residency Exhibition. One Thoresby Street, Nottingham, UK, 2018
John Moores Painting Prize. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK, 2018
Interface: A Cross-Genre Exploration. Korean Cultural Center, Washington, D.C., USA, 2018
Outpost Members' Show. Outpost, Norwich, UK, 2018
Thoresby Street Thursdays. One Thoresby Street, Nottingham, UK, 2018
Show RCA. Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2017
Traversing Boundaries. Korean Cultural Center, New York, USA, 2017
Begehungen No 14 Institut Potemkin. Kulturpalast Rabenstein, Chemnitz, Germany, 2017
Athens Digital Arts Festival. Historic Centre of Athens, Athens, Greece, 2017
Audio Room. The Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2016
Bloomberg New Contemporaries. ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), London, UK, 2016
Bloomberg New Contemporaries. Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK, 2016
Imaginary Worlds. Oriel Davies Gallery, Powys (Wales), UK, 2016
Borg Biennial. Borgerhout, Antwerp, Belgium, 2016
Athens Digital Arts Festival. Historic Centre of Athens, Athens, Greece, 2016
Analog RAM. Research House of Asian Art, Chicago, USA, 2016
Khojaly Peace Prize. Houses of Parliament, London, UK, 2016
WIP Show. Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2016
Publications
Prova 5: The RCA Arts & Humanities Research Journal, 2020