Chung Seoyoung : What I Saw Today: SeMA

What I Saw Today, a solo exhibition by sculptor Chung Seoyoung (b. 1964), presents a total of thirty-three pieces, including her major works produced since 1993 and nine new works. Chung is widely recognized as an artist who played a leading role in promoting the contemporaneity of modern sculpture during the 1990s―the decade in which Korean contemporary art acquired diversity and individuality. To this day, she continues her artistic experiments, which malleably deal with the issue of sculpture across various media and fields including drawing, sound, video, and performance art. The title of the exhibition refers to the artist’s long-term habit of writing down the colors, textures, motions that are hard to define yet memorable fine residue at the end of the day. Therefore, What I Saw Today is the title of the artist’s notes on fragmentary thoughts, and a reflection of her formative perception that what we see is both a physical path to discerning the world and a platform for engaging with it.

Chung Seoyoung considers sculpture as a kind of relational “platform” that reveals a fluid state beyond a static object. Each of the diverse and complex elements impacting one another until the sculpture takes on a single form “moves, flows, appears, disappears, and then reappears.” As tangible and intangible fragments extant in fleeting thoughts, emotions, actions, objects, or situations, such elements are dispersed fluidly and independently within the broad spectrum of “I-object-world.” As such, “sculptural moments” refer to the points when these shortly share the same space-time, and form a relationship to reveal themselves; this is when a sculpture comes into existence. The first part of the exhibition includes three of her early works that fully embody the artist’s worldview and critical thinking. Lookout “subverts the consensus of known facts and beliefs about objects,” while Wave attempts to include the dynamic or the intangible in plastic arts. In addition, Chung’s unique language used in the forms of titles or text drawings is an autonomous and independent element, which undergoes the process of collision, conflict, selection, and extinction, and thus further diversifies the context. The single word “awe” added to -Awe permits various interpretations such as hesitation and wonder, implying new possibilities.

Apart from the elaborate and complex process of awaiting the manifestation of “sculptural moments,” Chung’s works appear to be simple combinations of common materials at first glance. However, as she aims to “think minutely, yet show foolishly,” the seemingly simple and mundane elements in her works give rise to multi-layered semantic divisions, and paradoxically, the sparse void leaves room for rich implications. In this exhibition, such everyday materials as cloth, sponge, carpet, plastic, and rubber merge with the simple blank space to convey the unique properties of Chung’s art. The status of the objects chosen by the artist has changed significantly over the past 30 years; some materials are no longer produced, while newly adopted elements like light, sound, and text have expanded the realm of sculpture. The usage of traditional materials like bronze and stainless-steel wire on most recent works notes yet another expansion - in terms of reinterpreting the classics - in progress. What is even more intriguing is the arrangement of these thirty three works. Since the artist places a great emphasis on all the relationships and connections arising from the works on display, her representative works do not follow a chronological order. Rather, this exhibition presents a newly formed relationship between the works, as well as between the works and their locations. In particular, her new work A Bone in the Brain, placed in the center of the exhibition, functions as a focal point with its simple rectilinear bronze shapes connecting and branching out in different directions. The sculpture is reminiscent of the moment when fluid elements take on a skeletal form by instantly penetrating the space as one. Based on the way it dominates the entire exhibition space, A Bone in the Brain is expected to become yet another representative work of the artist.

The influence of social media such as YouTube and Instagram has been encroaching on our lives for some time. What we see and experience is expressed in the forms of instant images or videos, and responses from others as well as the number of “likes” and “hearts” impinge on our behavior and psychology. The general attitude towards works of art is no exception. The artwork itself has been reduced to a momentary object of a camera as we no longer focus on the artwork or experience it directly with our own eyes, and our appreciation of art is often dictated by feedback from others. As discussed earlier, Chung opts for concise, implicative, and intuitive expressions, which, in turn, may cause some inconvenience in understanding the works and make us rely on written explanations. However, the artists elucidates that there is “not one path to experiencing the intrinsic complexity of the work,” and urges us to “trust ourselves as its most important witnesses because any attempt to seek meanings can pose a barrier.” The World in the final part of the exhibition is a two-channel video installation that observes subtle changes in light and sound surrounding plasticine walnut pieces for 10 minutes delving into the issue of focusing on something for an extended period of time. Indeed, “sculptural moments” are short-lived, but Chung carefully studies objects for a long time in order to capture and understand such moments. On the contrary, how much time and effort do we put into engaging with the work? Perhaps the title of the exhibition, What I Saw Today, is a succinct yet compelling request from the artist to “look at the work” without being restrained by anything else.

“Taking a bird’s-eye-view of objects brings to light the relationships and movements that have been established within. The complex appearance is due to the fact that the meanings pruned and grafted with the passage of time interact with one another. Any disruption in the link between such interactions produces simple units. Among them, my sculpture selects those that contain everyday complexity, and creates conditions for another experience.” - Chung Seoyoung

Seungah Helen Lee

-Reference
Kim Chung Ran, “A Little Bit Sandy but Moving Relationships with Things: On an Anxiety from Prudence and Love; Chung Seo Young’s Sculptures,” Chung Seo Young by Kumho Gallery (1995), Kumho Gallery, Seoul, Korea.
Kim Hyunjin, "Things and languages that shine and vibrate on their own," Art in Culture, January 2008.
Jang Ji-han ed., That, There, then: Writing and Drawing of Kim Beom and Chung Seoyoung (Mediabus, 2021).
Chung Seoyoung, Interview with Barakat Contemporary, Barakat Contemporary, June 10, 2020.
Chung Seoyoung, “(A) Study on the Sculpture Works by Means of Siding with and Projection on Things” (Master’s Dissertation, Seoul National University, 1989).
Hong Soonmyeong, “Coexistence of thoroughness and laxity," Monthly Art, November 1999.
Ms. C, “An Interview with Chung Seoyoung by Ms.C,” The Speed of the Large the Small and the Wide, (Hyunsil Books, 2013).