Crayon Pop and their uncles

There have been flashy, glamorous collaborative projects between K-pop stars and artists, but few have dealt with the fans. Now, artist Jung Yeon-doo examines the craze for South Korean pop idols in “Crayon Pop Special”, his latest work.
The fans in whom Jung took interest, however, weren’t teenage girls but men in their late 30s and 40s.
Cheers in low male voices echo across the exhibition hall. The bass sounds come from Jung’s 30-minute video showing about 50 older male fans of the girl group Crayon Pop. In the clip, the male admirers wear cheerleader costumes designed with motifs inspired by the young ladies’ stage clothes and sing along at the top of their voices.
“I started the video project because I thought of the middle-aged male-fan craze as an interesting social phenomenon in Korean society,” Jung said at a press preview of his exhibition at Plateau at the Samsung Museum of Art. The show runs until June 8.
The artist highlights the peculiarities of these male fans.
“Korean men in their 30s and 40s are a very interesting demographic,” he said. “They have undergone a bitterly competitive life, so they understand how difficult it is to achieve success. They cheer for the B-list band ardently because they feel they are in the same boat, so they are gratified if the band’s popularity rises, boosted by their enthusiastic support.”
Jung was enamoured with the men after watching their passionate cheering and insatiable dedication to the girl group. They hail from diverse localities, including Ulsan and Jeonju, southern cities far from Seoul. “One guy even took a day off work to participate in our video shoot,” he said.
Jung calls the men “Popjeossi”, mixing the “pop” of Crayon Pop with ajeossi, which means “uncle” or “older man”. In documenting the Popjeossi, he attempts to reveal the older male generation’s psychological hollowness.
While “Crayon Pop Special” deals with show business and fans, Jung’s other latest work, “Virgil’s Path”, seeks to engage with “the essence of human beings”.
In “Virgil’s Path” he reinterprets sculptor Auguste Rodin’s work “The Gates of Hell”, a giant sculpture that stands in the lobby of Plateau. A special optical device, the Oculus Rift, enables viewers to watch the world of “The Gates of Hell” recreated by the artist, who had models strike the same poses as the figures depicted in the original sculpture.
Jung also displays snapshots of families in the Evergreen Tower apartment complex in Seoul and pictures of sales clerks at luxury boutiques in the affluent district of Ginza, Tokyo.