T-Yong Chung: The subject as space

Opening September 16th 2019, 6,30 pm

The exhibition will continue until November 2nd 2019

Absence, rupture and removal are considered as constructive gestures in Oriental Culture. That void produced through the consumption and obliteration of time makes way for the new. In his first solo show at Renata Fabbri Gallery T-Yong Chung proposes an action towards the future and its construction. “I delete images to balance them with the void. Observing the origins to find another space”, says the artist. Spatial and temporal elements defining his work recall an aesthetic suspended between classicism – meant as a tribute to Italy where the artist has been living and working for more than ten years – and conceptualism, in which the figure disappears leaving its trace in the space. T-Yong’s well-known sculptural portraits are here gathered for the first time in a variety of material declinations and shown along to a series of new works, specifically developed for this solo show. They give body to several iconic characters from Classicism who enter a dialogue with contemporary figures belonging to the artist daily experience and routine. These busts, made of plaster, ceramic, resin, wax and bronze are marked by a sharp cut on one side of the head. This gesture represents a look towards the future, a void to be filled. The artist indicates this same trace to the viewer through his paper works where the footprints left by a series of objects define the visual fragments of something that has passed. The show features sculptures, chalcographies and curtains that have also been printed with a chalcographic press: details of a dense and structured path that results from his recent years of practice, are here shown in a new and more distilled manner, projected towards a series of different themes and materials. In each work the significance of the light has the same functionality as the cut: it delineates those sharp shapes where time has frozen, to then start to run again in dialogue with an active present.

Rossella Farinotti