The first solo exhibition in Korea of Chung Kwang Hwa who works in Paris, presents photos and videos on the 'fin de siecle landscape.' In, a primary installation, Chung displayed a car cast in plaster over a landscape made with plaster powder and he turned on the humidifiers to emit moisture in the middle of the work. As time goes by, the plaster powder in the installation hardened slowly and the plaster car breaks and lost its shape. Over times the humidity becomes fog and covers the installation. The photos, the secondary result, take scenes from the process, while the video takes the detail of change. The unique point is that we can only see the change of installation in real time video, which is manufactured in other site (we cannot see the installation face to face).

If the installation work intends to reveal the phenomena of memories with times through materiality, the photos which recorded the intervals capture the 'perpetual moment' of a process in so-called memory system. By capturing a phenomenon of memory transformation by a visual medium in one moment, the photos take a role of reminding own's memories. In this way, his work not only seek to express the memory system with materials but also the examine the differences by taking photos and repeating the process.

In the end, although Chung deals with the question of memory, it is about a personal thinking system in different human mental operations, backgrounds and environments, which is superordinate idea to memory. It could be a question of ethnic particularity or personally unique identity. His works remind some points in a book titled by Mary Anne Staniszewski. She comments:

Not Only what we think, say, do or know shaped by a particular historical moment and culture, but our representations, the way we communicate, are bound to a particular voice-which has a gender, a race, a nationality ,a sexual identity, a very personal memory, a collective memory, and a history as well. (Believing is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Penguin Books, 1995.)

Furthermore, Chung provide a platform where we can see personal mental operation from different backgrounds and the diversity of memory system, so that we can have various interpretations from his works. Paradoxically, seeking rational immateriality through sensitive materiality, shows artist's will to induce more diverse individual communications in a special sensibility.
- Tong-Hyun Yu, Critic 

Courtesy of Trunk Gallery