Lot 1567: CHA MIN YOUNG

CHA MIN YOUNG
(B. 1977)
Immersion
mixed media, polymer clay, wood, zinc, plastic, lens, LED lamp, LCD monitor, suitcase
55 x 65 x 50 cm. (21 5/8 x 25 5/8 x 19 5/8 in.)
Executed in 2009

Cha Min Young's deceptively amusing sculptures and paintings are carefully calibrated with artistic oppositions. Acutely sensitive to the process of visual perception, Cha assembles found materials into miniature rooms hiding inside suitcases and creates canvas paintings cropped cinematically, present works that subtly combine an intimacy with the viewer and the artist's aesthetics of humility and understated charm.

Cha's proficient execution immerses the viewer in a discreet world of his making, executed with a clever and humourous rhetoric, staging a playful enigma with visual cues that kindle the viewers growing curiosity and crave to solve its mystery. A seductive red curtain slowly unveil a lens in Immersion (Lot 1567), putting the viewer in the place of a voyeur intruding into a private space. Cha deftly envelopes the viewer in this hand-crafted, perceptually convincing artificial world of describing an empty theater. Shrewd measures of our curiosity and Cha's humour continue in Behind Negotiation 1 & 2 (Lot 1568); taking on a pictorial illustration but still maneuvering the same degree of tension and suspense, the visual motif of a briefcase becomes the linking clue to her aesthetic puzzle between her sculpture and paintings. Each suitcase reveals a portion of its interior in surreal opposition to the exterior environment of the two banal meeting rooms, suggesting the gap between external dialogue between the two negotiators and their inner thoughts revealed inside the briefcase. The soft clouds peacefully float in the background, mimicking the calm and gentle discussion of the negotiators in Behind Negotiation 1, but the briefcase discloses a shark swimming in cunning silence, strategically waiting for the right moment to strike. Behind Negotiation 2 delivers an aura of heated, fuming conversation as grey smoke floods the background, but instead, the briefcase reveals the surprisingly serene demeanor of the negotiator. Though the cinematic cut and the absence of human figures imply the aftermath of discussion, the textural and tonal gradation of the carpet suggest instead a sense of lingering presence, thus, puzzling us again over the process of their negotiation. Cha does not only plot a strategic immersion between the two negotiators, but also to us as a viewer by inserting simple yet compelling cues to decode her own paintings. With her compositional focus under the table, Cha immediately hides us and quickly alters our 'viewing' into 'spying', sharpening our awareness as we begin to speculate over the jacket and the absence of its owner. Deliberately staged, she further soaks our mixed emotions onto the carpet with cool hues of muted green and tainted hue of warm orange to utter the significance of our engagement and immersion as what completes her aesthetics and concept.