Lot 512: CHUN KWANG YOUNG

CHUN KWANG YOUNG
(b. 1944)
Aggregation 06-JU010
signed in Chinese; signed 'Chun, kwang-young' in English; titled, dated and inscribed 'Aggregation 06-JU010 205 cm x 145 cm mixed media with korean mulberry paper' in English; titled in Korean (on the reverse)
mixed media with Korean mulberry paper
205 x 145 x 13.1 cm. (80 3/4 x 57 x 5 in.)
Executed in 2006

Chun Kwang Young's quiet but forceful aesthetic vocabulary can be traced back to the beginning of creation, during his time spent at the Philadelphia College of Art. Heavily influenced by the 1970s' abstract painting, Chun also 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.

Embracing the biological chemicals of nature, Kim extracts raw colors from green persimmon, gardenia seeds, leaves, chestnut shells, yellow earth and black teas to craft a relief-like oeuvre that resonate the organic poetics of mother nature. The red-brown warmth of soil is tinted on the triangular assemblages of antique book hanji. The tonal gradation of brown, grey and white in Aggregation 06-JU010 (Lot 512) is a figurative compilation of healing minerals of the earth as he wraps these minute Styrofoam in meditative uniformity, reminiscing or moreover praying his childhood nostalgia of the healing qualities of the herbal bags. With his remedial will in humbly emptying himself throughout the planes of his canvas, the transformation of his concept is apparent as he probes his wisdom on the limitless abstract landscape of humanity. Infrequently seen in his other oeuvres, this particular work in our Evening Sale marks its momentous inimitability as he composes over the square frame of the canvas, allowing the three dimensional forms to grow out of its given rectangular ecology, symbolizing his artistic maturity that extend beyond the conventional and institutional system. Resembling rocky plateaus of the desert, Chun's intimacy with his consistent material adeptly shows in his fluent handling of illusion of depth. The centre ascends to our vision with dark tints of concave bottom that imprint a sense of a mysterious hole, which then Chun further highlights with creamy tonal assemblages in vertical alignment throughout out the centre. These variable textures of tight and loose, large and minute fixes play a vivid music of life, effectively convincing us again of its medicinal qualities. These meticulous details require patience and virtue from the audience, demanding repeated viewing to appreciate its perceptually changing beauty that is analogous to the complex beauty of humanity. The vivid power of the moving waves of his complicated surface elicits our emotions, perhaps even our innate existential thoughts of the meaning of life and humanity as we glide our perception and our spirits along the waves of experiences and challenges; climbing and falling but learning and healing from it as we start to nurture an overall wisdom, finding beauty in the nature of our being as we find beauty in the miscellaneous landscape of Chun's work.

Chun continues to create intensely graceful yet dynamically textured plane, interweaved with social tableau ominous of a changing horizon where fleeting lights craft a geometric idiom, echoing his great academic and aesthetic discipline. He emits realms of subtlety that shrine the therapeutic sacredness of light as this expansive and intimate transcendental illumination appeal to our spirits. His geometric abstraction and systematic rigor elucidates his deep-seated human drive, allegorizing these subtle modulations of his surface plane to subtle changes of globalization where religious ethics and philosophy holds little control over contemporary society.