Featured in Public Art

Painting of Heemin Chung Refining paintings by groping materials

March 2023

By Jinjoo Kim (Curator, Seoul Museum of Art)

Yellow imitated gold. In the 15th century, a venetian painter discovered a yellow pigment and broke away from the prior techniques of replicating objects or images made of gold by painting them with gold. His endeavour was the initiation of a new experiment to expand the technique of imitation with materials that could be used on the day and place, to break away from the formula of equivalency such as painting gold with gold. On this day, after more than five hundred years have passed, numerous artists experiment with various materials as the elders did with the yellow pigment. The determination to ‘paint’ gold has still remained constant amid the development of materials. Heemin Chung brings the images that she sees on the digital screen into reality and explores the sensation of encountering the differences through the materials. An artistic challenge arises every moment when the implications embedded in her painting are unveiled. It is a determination as a painter to deal with the challenges of drawing, and the willingness to explore them by using ‘gel medium’.

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Heemin Chung has consistently sought to delve into the meaning of painting for the artist from the early stages of her work to the present. This contemplation has been continued from her solo exhibition held in 2016 to the most recent solo exhibition in 2022. The exhibition preface explains that it questions the meaning of images and materials through a metaphorical exploration of the changing sense of existence based on an interest in “conventional subjects of painting such as landscapes and still life”. This connects to the statement that the other side of illusion created by “the various strategies taken by two-dimensional landscape images” is uncovered on the surface of the canvas. As a painter in the post-internet era, Heemin Chung encounters images on digital interface, and these images, similar to categories within painting such as landscapes or still life, are already composed and possess a preconceived ‘visible’ state to the artist. In paintings on canvas, Heemin Chung depicts the way images are consumed within the context of today and this place and the process of acquiring the meaning of the images.