Art Plural Gallery presents New Dreams, a solo exhibition by Korean artist Chun Kwang Young. Running from 28 May to 20 July 2015, New Dreams presents 15 of his latest works.

 

The exhibition unveils new works from his Aggregation series that marks a shift in the eminent Korean artist’s life. Conveyed through a bold palette of bright pinks, deep oranges, warming yellows and evocative blues, the recent septuagenarian’s new vision of splendour transfixes him in an unprecedented state of reverie. Chun Kwang Young’s new understanding of his existence arrives as reflective bliss after four decades of honing his distinctive style.

 

Initially, the Aggregation series emerged out of Chun’s early memories, of visiting doctor’s offices of Eastern medicine and encountering packages of pills, wrapped in the traditional Korean mulberry paper. In moments of illness and unpleasant memories of these visits, the images of the paper packages hanging in the doctor’s office in all different sizes, flooded back into Chun’s memories. It was in returning to personal memory that Chun found a new visual expression for his art, which for him, was distinctly Korean. Having migrated to the United States in the 1960s and having been instantly attracted to the freedom of expression and styles of the Abstract Expressionists, Chun actively sought a mode of expression that would be authentic to him and his native background. Abstraction was appropriate to depict the conflict and division of society he experienced in both Korea and the United States.