South Korean artist Kwang Young Chun wraps tiny geometric packages in paper and combines them into massive wall-mounted and freestanding assemblages. Each composition is composed of thousands of individual mulberry paper parcels, carefully toned with tea and pigment and including the abstracted characters that allude to the paper’s origins as old documents. The works, which Chun refers to as ‘agreggations’, feature gradations in color and smooth craters within their highly textured surfaces.
Chun drew inspiration for his signature style from his illness-ridden childhood in Korea and the way that medicine was commonly packaged in triangular paper parcels of mulberry paper, or hanji. The artist was raised in Korea, lived in the United States in the 1960s while completed his M.F.A. at Philadelphia College of Art, and returned to his native country in adulthood.
In an artist statement on his website, Chun describes the disorientation he felt while a graduate student in America, tension and discord between the ways of his upbringing and the cultural modes of the U.S. This experience heightened his drive to express himself as a Korean artist, and in 1995 Chun landed on his current mode of making.
Six of the artist’s agreggations are on view in a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, through July 28, 2019. You can see more of his body of work on his website.
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