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Dae Hun Kwon: Chalna at Rachmaninoff’s

This time last year Dae Hun Kwon won the Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. This is his first London show since that award, and showcases some of his latest sculptures. Well worth a visit.

DAE HUN KWON: Chalna

7 June to 14 July 2012
opening Thursday 7 June 7-9pm

Installation view of some of Dae Hun Kwon's latest works
Installation view of some of Dae Hun Kwon's latest works. Courtesy of Rachmaninoffs and the artist

Rachmaninoff’s Smith/Arnatt is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by the Korean artist Dae Hun Kwon.

Dae Hun Kwon works with sculpture, installation and performance. His work is imbued with a distinctive sense of time as marking material objects including people in such a way that they become signs of their part in the configuration of moment (the artist refers to the Korean expression ‘Chalna’ which he translates as ‘the very moment when a thing or a phenomenon is developing’).

In his painted sculptural objects Dae Hun Kwon depicts highly specific but fleeting interrelations—between individuals performing often seemingly insignificant actions, physical things/objects realised with an acute feeling for their uniqueness and the registration of light. These objects achieve a phenomenological deep realism that is spiritual in the sense of an observed transfiguration of some secular, mundane subject matters. The method of realism the artist adopts is associated both with the careful observation of physicality as a species of truth to materiality and a willingness to place the physical within an appropriately fragile continuum sensitive to a kind of perceptual impressionism. This as a kind of limit case for the real.

Dae Hun Kwon, Untitled, 2012, acrylic polymer, plaster, paint, unique
Dae Hun Kwon, Untitled, 2012, acrylic polymer, plaster, paint, unique. Courtesy of Rachmaninoffs and the artist

Increasingly the artist alludes to narratives: for instance, a sculpture depicts a small baby with a mobile phone under one foot and a rocket in hand. The sculpture has a dramatic monochromatic finish, as if lit by a flash. In another work, a young woman checks her phone while her hand is placed on an English post box, here the relation is almost one of paradox: the brilliant red post box realised almost as if it were a machine for time travel, backwards.

Kwon was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1972, and moved to London in 2002. He now lives and works in Seoul and London. Kwon has shown internationally, including Bad Romanticism, Arco Art Centre, Seoul (2011), Primavere del bianco, MoA (Museum of Seoul), (2010) Blindness, Bo-an Inn project space, Seoul (2010), everything depends on your mind, Gallery b’ONE, Seoul (solo) (2010). Other institutional shows include USB: Urban Nomadism, Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Centre, Seoul, 2009, Your Mind’s Eye: Digital Spectrum, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2008). This will be Kwon’s second solo exhibition at Rachmaninoff’s Smith/Arnatt.

RACHMANINOFF’S SMITH/ARNATT 25 Dalston Lane, London E8 3DF T +44 (0)20 7249 8191
Gallery hours: Wednesday to Saturday 11am – 6pm
Nearest station: Dalston Junction Overground
www.rachmaninoffs.com
Contact: [email protected]

(automatically generated) Read LKL’s review of this event here.

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