Lot 1081: CHUN KWANG YOUNG

CHUN KWANG YOUNG
(b. 1944)
Aggregation 05-0C 047
signed and titled in Chinese; signed, inscribed and titled 'Chun, Kwang-Young AGGREGATION 05-0C047 198 x 289 cm MIXED MEDIA WITH KOREAN MULBERRY PAPER-05 K.ychun' in English (on the reverse)
mixed media with Korean mulberry paper
198 x 289 cm (78 x 113 3/4 in.)
Executed in 2005

Seoul, Korea, Kukje Gallery, Chun Kwang-Young Aggregation 2005, 15 November-18 December, 2005.

Chun Kwang-Young Aggregation 2005, exh. cat., Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea, 2008 (illustrated, p. 31).

Robert Miller Gallery, New York

Chun Kwang Young's quiet but forceful aesthetic vocabulary can be trailed back to the beginning of creation, during his time spent at the Philadelphia College of Art. Heavily influenced by the 1970s' abstract painting, Chun delved into this prevalent art movement burying his nostalgia towards hometown and perhaps even his Korean identity. In his early works, he investigated different materials, techniques and colors which soon built a concrete platform for developing his Aggregation series. Chun's curious play of colors was controlled under his awareness of the role in lighting and illumination. Although he utilized the western medium of oil, his innate partiality towards his culture was apparent in his choice to wash the oil thin to a characteristic likeness of ink and his later works of the 1980s focused on aesthetic composition as he filled his canvas with compressed elegance. In 1977, he returned to Korea and found his roots, securing his identity, perhaps even his own artistry by incorporating his childhood memory of dangling herb paper bags at the herbal medicine dispensary. Nevertheless, his earlier works developed into his recent works with surprising consistency through his meticulous and patient technique of nimble repetition.
Aggregation 98-S101 and Aggregation D00-50S (Lot 1082) may have been solely pondered on the native material of mulberry paper as he continued to fuse perceptual and conceptual challenges in vastly poetic and mature maneuvers by utilizing antique books to coordinate a finely tuned balance of black and white palette of traditional painting with his readymade mediums. His technical virtuosity in manipulating a readymade object was blended with his perspicacity to the significance of neutral colors in Korean tradition towards nature and spirituality as he used colors from nature-- green persimmon and gardenia seeds, leaves, chestnut shells, yellow earth and black teas to dye his mulberry paper and to more so embrace the variable and valuable persona nature entails and provides for the world. In 2004, Chun experienced deeper contemplation on modern society and its impudence towards nature and environment. If his earlier works exhibited an aura of earth's landscape, here, he has brought a lunar landscape with concave depth tinted with sinuous gradation, stimulating a visual reflex of a shooting star in Aggregation 05-0C047 (Lot 1081). From oriental landscape to stellar geography, his thorough self cultivation from the past has expanded his wisdom to now probe the limitless, abstract landscape of humanity, metaphorically apparent in the complicated planes in our Evening sale's Aggregation 06-JU010 (Lot 512).