SUNG-PIL CHAE

Just as landscapes can be appreciated from any angle, a viewer can also enter Chae Sung-Pil’s work fromany perspective and experience the myriad forms of nature intersecting in different dimensions of time andspace: from giant waves that reach the sky in seconds, to the geological deposits which formed over thousandsof decades, from the flow of the waves by the shore to the dance of the wheat fields in the wind, from theripples of the sudden rain to the patterns carved by aging trees... ...

The artist: he is the one who accompanies, who offers and guides but who never completes.Only nature completes things. As such, the verb ‘to paint’, for Chae Sung-Pil, is not conjugatedaccording to the traditional ‘I paint, you paint, he paints’, etc... but rather as a reflexive verb ‘Ipaint myself’. The tableau ‘paints itself’. — David Rosenberg, art critic and curator

Chae works with several distinctive rhythms, among which the most fascinating is the process of a suddenchange. For instance, he flings the paint with a broom-like brush, leaving several trails across the pre-layeredcanvas on the studio floor: he uses a hose shooting jets of water on a canvas with soil or ink drops. Whereasanother rhythm is more ‘undulating’: as he stands behind the canvas, holding the stretcher in his hands, heconstantly changes the position of the canvas, directing the flow of water up, down, left and right... The mostgradual pace occupies the preparation phase: the artist invests an enormous amount of time in collecting soils,making his own pigments (a technique that Chae has researched and mastered while studying Orientalpainting at university), carefully filtering and refining the muddy water, and finally applying several coats ofsilver powder made from pearl powder to the canvas.

Chae once explains the ‘flow’, the essential technique in his creation involving both ‘control’ and ‘serendipity’:Water is something that accumulates and overflows, and when we look down on the ground from a high sky,overflowing water is called a river, creating empty footprints as it passes through and divides the land. Andwhat he does in the virtual space is ‘a poetic pictorial metaphor to the ‘Tao’ of nature’, which uses the canvasas the screen, where the synergy of the materials, the process of creation, and the final result take place.

This attempt of approaching the essence of Nature is influenced by Eastern philosophy, especially Taoismand the doctrine of the five elements. It builds an unusual connection among materials, techniques, and subjectmatters, making Chae’s work stand out from both Dansaekhwa (Korean monochrome painting) and Westernabstract expressionism. This coincides with Chae’s remark on the boundary, The word ‘boundary’ is not only the point that distinguishes this and that, but also the point where they meet, and I think that the boundary isthe point of change and creation, especially from a creative perspective.

Among the five elements, ‘water’ is the closest to the ‘Tao’, 上善若⽔, the highest excellence is like that ofwater, which nourishes all things gently without competing with them and is always content to stay in a humbleplace that no one seeks after, thus it is the closest to the ‘Tao’. Whereas the ‘earth’ is the closest element tothe artist and the most connected element between Eastern and Western cultures. Chae Sung-Pil, who lefthome for study at a young age, uses soil as the ‘medium’ of home, evoking not only his carefree childhoodmemories — rolling in the hills, playing in the dirt, accompanied by the sea breeze from the mountains — withall kinds of sounds, smells and touches, but also his longing for family, among which Chae’s mother is hismost concern during all these years of living overseas.

As for his creations, Chae comes up with new ideas and changes his mind on a daily basis, but if there is onetheme that he would like to keep, it would be works about his mother, which means ‘creating works thatrepresent Earth, Water, Nature, and Land’. Using blue to express water also comes to him naturally. The artistonce wrote Blue is the sea that embraces the land and the sky that has watched over the history of the earth.Besides, blue also has a prominent place in the history of art.

The visual impact of these ‘earth’ and ‘water’ composed of soil and minerals, brown and blue magnify theseimages infinitely in our perception, trying to awaken our connection with the ‘Origin of heaven and earth’. Thissense of universality is what Chae Sung-Pil aspires to achieve, and his life in France over the past twentyyears has convinced him that the raison d’être of the artist is to create works that transcend the barriers oflanguage, culture, and even time, while constantly experimenting at various boundaries to seek a world thatbelongs to him and resonates with others.