Happy Nice Mall

SEOUL — At a time when artists can sell paintings and sculptures for dizzying sums, Jeon Joonho and Moon Kyungwon take a somewhat contrasting approach.

“We don’t want to just make art,” Ms. Moon said in an interview at their studio designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito in Seoul’s Seochon district. “We’re trying to listen to other voices to rethink our position.”

Over the past decade, Ms. Moon and Mr. Jeon – or Moon and Jeon as they are commonly known – have formed a diverse artistic partnership that often includes collaborations with architects, fashion designers, actors and scientists.

Dreamy, meticulously crafted short videos are their trademark and sometimes make separate objects, but their efforts have also taken the form of discussion series, books, and design. Both, 52, became stars in international art circles and represented their respective South Koreas at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

their last show 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in KanazawaIt covers an ongoing urban renewal project as well as video installations in May, Japan, and the nearby seaside village of Kanaiwa. This project includes the redesign with architect Yuji Nakae of a dilapidated wall that protects the area from wind, sand and sea debris. A new video will follow a man searching for survivors in a lifeboat in a post-apocalyptic virtual reality world.

Such futuristic, post-disaster settings have become a constant interest for the duo and a way to tackle contemporary issues from oblique angles. “Moon and I don’t like to deliver a message to the audience,” Mr. Jeon said. “We want to give you a key -“

“—or a hint of our ideas,” said Miss Moon, ending her sentence, as they usually do for each other.

William Morris’s 1890 novel “News From Nowhere” served as an inspiration and a title for his work. In Morris’ universe, a man falls asleep and wakes up more than a century later in a socialist utopia. Ms. Moon and Mr. Jeon’s settings tend to be much darker. Civilization collapsed; people are trying to move forward.

At the center of their last show National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) here’s a two-screen video born of their research Taesung Freedom VillageLocated in the Demilitarized Zone and protected by the United Nations Command. About 200 residents receive special tax breaks but are subject to curfew and closely watched. (The couple was unable to get permission to shoot there.)

In one display, a local man wanders through a forest, cataloging plants and sending samples into the air in a balloon. Mysteriously, its contents appear on the second screen in a hermetically sealed high-tech room inhabited by a lone man. He is fed under video surveillance and from pouches provided by his computerized home. He examines the samples, secretly sows a seed and decides to put on a mask and go outside.

The work, which was planned before the pandemic, had a new resonance. “Liberty Village itself now presents it to us,” said MMCA curator Joowon Park, who organized the show. “We are completely isolated – physically, because we wear a mask every day, but also mentally.”

Decades of photos of Taesung, subtly altered by artists, hiding people’s identities, hung next to the videos, and Ms. Park said many young people who visited were “confused about whether this village is real or not.” His 70-year alienation is a result of the Korean War, but “stories like these are all over the world,” he said, and made comparisons to Kabul, Hong Kong and Taiwan, all with formidable borders or restricted movement.

The Freedom Village video will be in Kanazawa with the duo’s first film, “El Fin del Mundo (2012)”, which also uses a time-honoured binary structure. On one screen, in a rundown studio, a man works on a dilapidated statue; in the other, in a brutally commercialized future, a woman visits the room, examines her materials—now artifacts—and is fascinated.

“This is a philosophical-social reflection of Korea for the future – or the present in the future as a past,” said Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, director of the Castello di Rivoli art museum in Turin, Italy, who invited them to join in. 2012 edition of the important Documenta exhibition held in Kassel, Germany.

The piece can be taken as an allegory for their enduring belief in making experimental art. Mr. Jeon asked, “What is the meaning of contemporary art?” He said they meant to ask. They show that it can be a forum for uniting different creative forces.

Dutch architectural firm MVRDV presented habitable, biodegradable “bubbles” in response to a dystopian scenario by the artists at the 2013 Chicago exhibition by Mrs Moon and Mr Jeon. For the 2015 Zurich show, the two worked with Swiss design group Urban-Think Tank to design the “Mobile Agora”, a movable seating for discussions among people from various fields.

“There is a need for artist philosophies that are rethinking the social role of art,” Koichi Nakata, senior curator of the Kanazawa museum, said in an email to the pandemic.

Their focus on such fundamentals dates back to their first meeting on an airplane at a biennial in 2007 to showcase their work. Although both continued to do solo work, intense discussions eventually led to their partnership. “We talked a lot about how to survive as an artist in the art market,” said Ms. Moon.

Surviving as an artist today – making her ambitious films – means attracting funding from sources like museums, foundations and businesses. “You can’t imagine how many presentations we make to companies,” said Mr. Jeon.

Oh Jung-wan, a Korean film industry veteran, serves as a producer, and major galleries in Seoul and Tokyo sell limited editions of his work, including his videos. Still, it’s not always an easy process.

“We are dreamers,” said Mr. Jeon emphatically. “We are dreamers.” There was a short pause, and Miss Moon let out a satisfied laugh.