A new venue for me, in Eastcastle Street W1, and the first time I’ve seen Yujung Chang in a solo show, though she appeared at I-MYU a while ago:
Yujung Chang: Eclipses
11 October – 10 November 2012
Yujung Chang: Horizon (2012). Archival print on film with light installation, 137 x 180 cm
AF Projects is delighted to present a new series of installation and photographic works by the South Korean artist Yujung Chang – her first solo exhibition in the UK since graduating from Goldsmiths in 2007.
In her new installation and photographic works Chang explores the spaces between memory, perception and reality. Each of the still images that are employed as subjects in her installations has a distinct narrative – from the differing shades of the faded wooden surfaces in her home that suggest the slow and inexorable divergence of experience, to the abandoned factory in Chungju that speaks of a much more dramatic and literal story of change and reinvention.
The work Horizon, 2012 depicts a blinded window at Ewha Womens University – a space that Chang first encountered as a student, and now finds herself returning to as a lecturer. These battered and creased blinds become a metaphor for the entropic change that has subtly altered the nature of this ‘known’ space in the time that Chang has spent studying abroad, and so the work – a still and illuminated image hovering in space – becomes an image not just of a place but of a process.
The signature work of the exhibition – Eclipses, 2012 – is the product of a project commissioned by Chungju City Government, where 20 artists were invited to chart and work from the site of the Korean National Museum of Contemporary Art’s upcoming expansion – an abandoned tobacco factory in the centre of the city. An element of the architecture that Chang focused on was the antiquated and dilapidated lighting system that sprawled across the ceiling of the gigantic bare concrete spaces. Several different grades and standards of lights – some still functioning, others broken or redundant – were recorded. In the finished work these images will be printed on film and suspended in a ring and back-lit, so that the images of both functional and non‐functional lights will be equally illuminated; an act of recognition and reconciliation of past and present.
Chang’s exploration of the inherent strangeness and ambiguity of supposedly familiar surroundings and objects is both reverent and melancholic. There are elements of something approaching the surreal in this work – a transformative process that shifts not so much the subject’s nature as the lens through which we observe it. Each of Chang’s works exist as still and silent reminders of a world that continues to turn without us, and in which the concept of ‘knowing’ is a fluid and continuous act of discovery.
Yujung Chang (born 1979 – lives and works in Seoul, Korea) studied at Ewha Womens University, Seoul before completing her MFA in fine art at Goldsmiths. Select solo exhibitions include Emerging Series7: Acrylic on Real Life, Ssamzie Space, Seoul (2007); SEO Young Artist: Yujung Chang, SEO Gallery, Seoul (2008); Independent Reality, Gallery SKAPE, Seoul (2009); and Overlapping Paths, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwangju, Korea (2011). Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Good Morning, Mr. Nam June PAIK, Korean Cultural Center, London (2008); 8 Colors, Gallery Noon, Beijing (2008); The Magic of Photography, The Museum of Photography, Seoul(2009); Stay Longer, Architektur buero Lechle, Munich, Germany (2010); Systematish, Tengs Gmbh. Munich, Germany (2009); Unrealized Projects_Architecture of Incompleteness, Space Hamilton, Seoul (2010); Beyond Landscape, Art Park Gallery, Seoul (2010); The Group, Kips Gallery, New York (2011); Contemporary Sculpture from Korea and China, Korean Art Centre, Beijing (2011); Object, Object, Object, Art Space H, Seoul (2011); Rendezvous, Dong Kang International Photo Festival, Youngwol, Korea (2011); The 27th Solo Exhibition, Insa Art Space, Seoul (2012); and Emerging Image, Beyond Museum, Seoul (2012).
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