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| Chung Zu-young's "M21" (2021) on display at Gallery Hyundai in central Seoul as part of the artist's solo exhibition, "Meteorologica" / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai |
By Park Han-sol
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| Painter Chung Zu-young / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai |
Her multiple trips to Mount Bukhan, Inwang, Dobong and the Alps would produce odd yet mesmerizing close-ups of cliffs, gorges and boulders.
But now, the artist has chosen to look beyond the mountain range ― high up toward the sky and all things within it.
At her solo exhibition, "Meteorologica," displayed at Gallery Hyundai in central Seoul until March 26, Chung unveils her latest series "M" that dreamily captures the ever-shifting state of nature ― from changing weather and seasons to fleeting clouds, the wind and sunsets.
"Unlike the mountain paintings, my works here fix their gaze on the elements that are inevitably uncertain, ambiguous and transient," she remarked at a press preview last month.
On view are the pieces that immortalize the transitory moments of the surprisingly multihued sundown ("M21") and a billow of thick, dark clouds brewed before a raging storm ("M40" and "M41").
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| Chung Zu-young's "M40" (2022), left, and "M41" (2022) / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai |
"The sky is an open space without a fixed shape or form. I could not portray it with definite outlines and instead had to rely on the colors themselves," Chung said.
Although she uses oil paint, which is typically applied on canvas in a way that highlights its thick materiality, the artist noted that her works are more like an abstract version of traditional Eastern ink-and-wash landscape paintings as it is completed with repeated layers of extremely thin, near-transparent brushstrokes.
That's how the profoundly mysterious gray in "M40" and "M41" came to be born; paper-thin layers of light blue, pink and yellow have come together to birth an indescribably deep hue that forms heavy clouds before the tempest's arrival. Except, her storm clouds are here to provide a sense of serenity.
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| Kang Hong-goo's "Uninhabited Island 085" (2022) on view at the Savina Museum of Contemporary Art in northwestern Seoul for his solo exhibition, "Uninhabited Island & Inhabited Island ― Sea of Shinan II" / Courtesy of Savina Museum of Contemporary Art |
Uninhabited islands in Shinan imbued with childhood fantasy
Digital photographer Kang Hong-goo's documentation of his hometown in Shinan County, South Jeolla Province began with his mother's wish to return to pick the native "gosari" ("fernbrake" in English) to make a popular Korean spring side dish.
An unplanned visit to his birthplace with his mother in 2005 has turned into a 17-year-long photographic journey for the artist to capture the slowly disappearing seaside communities on the islands of Manjae, Heuksan and Hong, among many others, that are strewn along the coastline of Korea's southern province.
But the highlight of his latest solo exhibition at the Savina Museum of Contemporary Art in northwestern Seoul is not the landscape photography portraying the inhabited islands but their many, many more uninhabited counterparts ― hence the show's title, "Uninhabited Island & Inhabited Island ― Sea of Shinan II."
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| Korea's first-generation digital photographer Kang Hong-goo / Courtesy of Savina Museum of Contemporary Art |
In fact, Shinan is a county of 1,025 islands, with only 72 still populated.
For Kang, the deserted islands across the sea that he grew up observing were both a part of his everyday reality and an object of wild childhood fantasy.
The artist adds playful drawings of a clothesline, a mammoth pencil, a torch, a piano and a life vest ― things that cannot possibly exist on a rocky island amidst the ocean ― to his photographs, thus "personalizing" the uninhabited places that have birthed the strangest legends for generations.
Some islets were rumored to be "filled with rabbits" that were brought in by someone with a dream to make a hefty sum by breeding the animals in nature. Others were apparently occupied by a legendary serpent who can wrap the whole island nine and a half times to protect the hidden treasures.
"The deserted islands represent the past and future of their inhabited counterparts," Kang wrote in his artist's note. "For me, they are the products that reflect my personal imagination and dream."
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| Kang Hong-goo's "Uninhabited Island 082" (2022) / Courtesy of Savina Museum of Contemporary Art |
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