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| Knoxville Museum of Art
Kwang-Young Chun: Aggregations, new work
June 10-September 4, 2011
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Kwang-Young Chun: Aggregations, new work, organized by University of Wyoming Art Museum, is currently on exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art through September 4. Chun started his career studying western painting using Abstract Expressionism and began to develop pieces with his own Korean artistic voice.
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Kwang-Young Chun*
Aggregation08-AU022, 2008
Mixed media with Korean mulberry paper, 230x222x325cm |
As an artist, I have often used personal memories and objects as starting points for a series of pieces of art. It is interesting to see the thinking process and the internalization of memory to create pieces which do show his Korean voice. Chun's memory of packets of tied paper from herbal pharmacies and seeing old books in Korean script and Chinese characters resulted in objects which are very complex.
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At a distance, the pieces look like shaped canvases; but as you get closer, you see this new level of complexity in the pieces. The colors on the pieces, some very tiny, at a distance are created by dyed mulberry of paper from old books. You see the text made of Korean script and Chinese characters with colors from the books which replace marks or drawing on the piece. They first look like aerial shots from some city, landscape, or cratered moonscape. When you move in closer, your focus is on the the individual styrofoam triangular pieces each wrapped with paper tied with “string” made by rolling pages of script (you can see the print) and attached to the form. |
| Aggregation07-D111B* |
| It is interesting to view these pieces from different perspectives, not just straight on, since they are three dimensional. His large hanging globe, for example, will actually sway slightly just from the movement of the air as people walk around it. This interaction makes the visitor, in some small way, part of this piece of art if only for a moment. Even the shadow it casts on the floor seems to be part of the piece itself. |
detail* |
This is a very intriguing exhibition. I encourage you if you are in the Knoxville area, or traveling near, to take the time see the pieces. Make sure you look at them close up as well as far away. Very detailed work. You can see other examples of his work, including the “globe”, on the Knoxville Museum of Art's main page, and read more about the exhibition on the KMA's Exhibitions info page on Art Museum Touring.
- Sherrie Carris
*photo credit for all images: Sherrie Carris
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