In its transitive sense, the verb “to perform” requires for its object an act, a task, something prewritten. For something to be performed or, as the title of Geumhyung Jeong’s recent exhibition at London’s Delfina Foundation implies, “unperformed,” some latent function is implied, and the many meticulously arranged objects that were part of this installation were replete with potential both intrinsic and extra to the purpose of their manufacture.

Although the show featured six screens playing videos of Jeong’s various performances, and accompanying live enactments of her 7ways (2014) took place in the Tanks at Tate Modern on October 3 and 5, much can be gleaned by considering these objects on their own terms, discovering the multifarious acts written into them both individually and in relation to each other.

Organised in groups on a series of plinths, Jeong’s as yet “unperformed” items—her private collection—created intertwining nexuses of meaning, and, at their most effective, implied conceptual folds relating to function, physicality and a dichotomy between interior and exterior. One subtle example involved an array of devices with medical connotations: A set of digital scales was placed next to a digital blood pressure monitor, next to which was an older pump-based version of the device, and a series of other pump apparatuses whose nozzles and masks are designed to attach to the human body in various ways. From one end of the plinth to the other, then, the implication moves from outside the body to within it, from the static functionality of a digital device to the respiratory, corporeal motion of pneumatic ones.

In another example, the kind of pump used to inflate rubber dinghies, air beds and the like shared a plinth with a series of unused balloons and, at the opposite end, an inflatable male sex doll, folded with its face up and accompanied by the original packaging, describing “Peter” and his “huge pecker” as “perfect for: bachelorette parties / birthday parties / carpool lanes.” Elsewhere, parts of flying drones were combined with batteries and power adaptors, folded clothes with the limbs of mannequins, or old-fashioned ring toss games juxtaposed with more sex toys—both novelty and practical. 

This folding from inflator to inflated, from medical to erotic, and erotic to comic and ludic, created the overwhelming impression that within and between these articles a narrative is written—a script waiting to be performed. Indeed, on some of the plinths were instruction manuals describing how various items might be used, with one displaying only such manuals and accompanied by two screens playing demonstrative footage describing how to set up various harnesses and other equipment for apparently physiotherapeutic purposes. When it comes to their being performed, however, the instructions for these articles lie in the insinuations of the body, sexuality, and ways of conceptualizing these things both medically and erotically. As they evoke human anatomy both directly and indirectly, we imbue these artefacts with our perceptions of gender and sex while they simultaneously feed our expectations, resulting in an ambiguous relation between subject and object.

This complex relation between human and object, viewer and viewed, is borne out in Jeong’s performances. In each of six actions whose videos were shown in the exhibition, the artist interacts—often erotically—with variously humanoid figures. In one clip, she controls the arm of an almost anatomically complete mannequin via a pivoted handle, guiding it to clumsily undress her. In another, another humanoid form bears a pair of scissors that, by Jeong’s hand, slices into her black dress as the two hold each other in an exhausted embrace. Elsewhere, a mannequin’s head attached to a folding ladder rises and lowers rhythmically and imposingly above the artist, whose legs are intertwined with the ladder itself. In each of these actions a form of pivot is at play, some intermediary device reflecting the kinetic energy between artist and article. Seeing both sides of this darkly erotic and at times implicitly violent mechanical mirror, we’re invited to reflect on a question regarding objects and people: Which performs which?

Ned Carter Miles in the London desk editor of ArtAsiaPacific.

Geumhyung Jeong’s “Private Collection: Unperformed Objects” is on view at Delfina Foundation, London, until November 11, 2017.

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