Jiyoon Chung
Dead End

1 MAY until 6 JUN 2026
Opening – 1 MAY 2026, 6-9 pm

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin 2026, Galerie Anton Janizewski presents Dead End, Jiyoon Chung’s first solo exhibition in Berlin. The artist builds on an exhibition that took place at Politikens Forhal as part of the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition’s solo prize in Copenhagen.

In the Berlin exhibition, the artist presents a site-specific installation that addresses themes of perception and the handling of fear, external affect regulation, and infrastructures of control. While Chung’s project in Copenhagen establishes a connection to the foiling of a terrorist attack in late 2010 and addresses the resulting strengthening and reorganization of the art museum’s security structure, the solo exhibition at Anton Janizewski takes place against the backdrop of a current intensification of security policies that are increasingly supplanting the search for social solutions.

Dead End translates “crisis-ordinariness”—the ordinariness of crises—into visual triggers. Through this confrontation with triggers, Chung creates a state within the gallery spaces intended to disrupt the familiar rhythm of everyday life. In doing so, she questions the extent to which the expectation of insecurity and unease is compatible with the supposed stability of the daily rhythm.

Fingerprints placed close to the gallery windows reveal, in a forensic manner, our almost imperceptible yet most frequently left behind traces. They are situated at the boundary between two types of public space: the outside world and the exhibition space.

Upon entering the gallery, visitors are confronted with a modified sliding door. A wooden crucifix is affixed to the center of the two glass panels, which is split in two when the door is opened. Other crucifixes in the exhibition, cast in epoxy resin, also employ this symbol in unusual ways.

For Chung, the crucifix is a dead end of the imagination. As one of the most recognizable symbols of all, it has lost its former power to inspire deep contemplation. Through its constant presence, it has become almost devoid of meaning. A form so overloaded with meaning that it allows room for new, human traces. In the presence of the cross, thought comes to a standstill: each of its four cardinal points literally ends in a dead end.

Jiyoon Chung (*1990, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Seoul. Chung earned her BFA from Chung-Ang University and received her degree from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule in 2024. Selected solo exhibitions include: “Dead End”, Forhallen, Copenhagen; “White Lies”, N/A Gallery, Seoul; and “Condition Reserved”, Kornhäuschen, Aschaffenburg. She was awarded the Künstlerhilfe Frankfurt e.V. prize and the graduate prize from Sammlung Pohl in 2024.