Chun Kwang Young is best known for a series of work titled Aggregation that focusses on one central theme: the remembrance of the past and the rebirth of the new.
Growing up in South Korea, he remembered seeing medicinal herbs wrapped in mulberry paper, tied into small packages and hung from the ceiling at the local doctor’s office. Mulberry paper is a traditional handmade paper processed in Asia, using fibers from the inner bark of the mulberry tree. This childhood memory inspired him to wrap triangular plastic foams in antique mulberry-pulp paper and color them with tea or pigment.
He developed this unique style by merging concepts of opposing forces like the past and the present and by incorporating sculptural forms into a painting surface. His work has triggered out his awareness of his Korean cultural heritage while adopting the freedom of the Abstract Expressionist tradition that he cultivated during his years in the United States. The result is a spectacular amalgam of small forms jutting out from assemblage in an explosion of color and depth.
Chun Kwang Young received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Hongik University, Seoul and a Master of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art, Pennsylvania. His work is included in several important collections of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Rockefeller Foundation and the United Nations, New York; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea.
In November 2024, Chun will be having his first major solo exhibition in London since 2014 at the Tristan Hoare Gallery.
