CHUNG CHI YUNG

The exhibition title ‘Tabula Rasa’ is a Latin phrase often defined as ‘blank state’: a condition that nothing is placed. An object what Chung pays attention to in the exhibition is a white fabric standing for a default phase which is simple and primitive without any supplements, corresponding to the title. The fabric depicted through Photorealism techniques which he has consistently focused on brings about a new mode of Realism emphasizing on picturesque traits beyond a mere realistic description. In terms of representing almost colorless subjects, exceeding only a practical reflection and portrayal of targets, his approach leads an investigation into another meaning of an existence behind the fabric by stimulating certain sentiments.

The artworks presented in the exhibition are originated in a story of ancient Greek painters, Zeuxis (5th century BC) and Parrhasios (5th century BC): in a contest to determine the greater artist between them, when Zeuxis unveiled his painting of grapes, they appeared so real that birds flew down onto them. Yet when Parrhasios, whose painting was concealed behind a curtain, was asked to pull aside that curtain, but the curtain itself turned out to be a painted illusion. Chung derived motifs, a fabric and a trickery, from the story. As though the presence of the fabric and the act of clearing that away played a role to reveal the true nature of those two artworks, the cloth hung over Chung’s practice also connotes various possibilities. Spaces beyond over the sheet become a clue evoking imagination conjure up an emergence of unexpected objects or vain consequences. Thus his works catch the condition which provokes curiosity and its following situation at once. Furthermore it implies tentative moments when obscured actual states are not completely exposed and at the same time they are not thoroughly covered.

In addition, Chung employs the fabric as persona which enables him to hide his inward nature in the society. The sheet operates as a mask taking a part of protecting the artist from the world and also its thin and light characteristic functions as a metaphor signifying artist himself as a vulnerable individual. Fabric’s cross stripes and creases’ organic forms stretch out in a number of directions creating a surface where both regularity and irregularity coexist as if they spoke for unpredictable traces of life. At the intersection point of straight grid creases and dynamically folded fine lines, a collision between objective social structures and subjective emotions or variables occurs.

Chung adopts the medium, fabric as a device possessing a multi-layered significance in order to manifest his own self and troubled faces of this society, raising existential questions about the meaning of life. The static colors arousing even an impression of the sublime and the elaborate depiction of crumpled folds generate the works’ abstractness despite his realistic techniques. The paintings embodied through the trompe-l’œil skills, the art of optical illusion, and Photorealism maximizing a sense of reality stand on a boundary between abstraction and representation or even beyond that instead of being captured in a frame.

Chung Chi Yung has had several solo exhibitions in significant art institutions and he has broaden his artistic scope towards the international scene by attending group shows in New Deli and Hong Kong. As an artist leading Korean Photorealism, Chung is occupying himself by producing artworks, vigorously seeking a direction of Realism paintings. - GB -