Jang Kwang-Bum, Chae Sung-Pil

채성필, 대지의 몽상(Rêve de terre 240401), 162x130cm, 캔버스에 흙과 수묵, 2024

Gallery Joeun is pleased to present the duo exhibition “Floating Gesture” by Chae Sung-Pil (b. 1972) and Jang Kwang-Bum (b. 1972) from July 17 to August 17. With their unique artistic language, the two artists depict the fundamental beauty of Mother Nature that flows and moves, without limiting itself to a single moment.                                      

For Chae Sung-pil, who believes that beauty lies in essence, “earth” is a model and prototype, a basic material from which the artist’s unique esthetic evolves. After a thin layer of pearl powder is applied to a large canvas, it is covered with paint made from a combination of earth, natural pigments and ink. After pouring and sweeping the paint with a brush reminiscent of a saribi (*Korean traditional wooden broom) designed by the artist himself, he moves the water-poured canvas to open a water channel that allows the paint and water to paint itself.

채성필, 물의 초상(Portrait d_eau 240502), 116x89cm, 캔버스에 천연안료, 2024

The artist only indicates the direction in which the brush and the watercourses should go, leaving the work to natural chance. Like the meaning of nature 自然, “it is of itself”, the work resembles nature itself, flowing from top to bottom. The traces created by earth and water, a sieve that excludes artificial methods, are reminiscent of images of nature constantly moving and changing on the earth’s surface. The landscape created by a series of processes “becomes a tree, a field, an undulating sea, and the wind becomes the earth” (art critic Anne Kerdraon)

The exhibition encompasses the artist’s artistic world by presenting the “Renaissance Check”, an esthetic reconstruction of the appearance of earth and rock, and the series “World”, which expresses the form of interwoven people, as well as the representative series “Portrait of Water”, “Dream of the Land” and “Anonymous land”.

채성필, 르네상스 체크(Renaissance Check 240318), 73x92cm, 캔버스에 흙과 수묵, 2024

Chae Sung-pil, who received his bachelor’s degree in oriental painting from Seoul National University and his master’s degree from the same university, completed a master’s degree at the University of Rennes II in France and a doctorate in plastic arts at the University of Paris 1. He lives in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and has been active in his work for more than 20 years. After solo exhibitions at Gana Art Centre in Pyeongchang-dong (2022), Gallery Marianne Ibrahim in Paris (2023) and Art Chosun Space (2024), he has been active in Europe and Korea. His works are collected by major art institutions, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Seoul Museum of Art and the Cernuschi Museum of Art in Paris.

장광범 Jang Kwang-Bum, Montagne, 2023, acrylic on canvas, sanding, 100.5 x 100.5 cm

Jang Kwang-Bum (b. 1972), who, like Chae Sung-Pil, works in France, visualizes the “form of time” through the process of applying and removing paint on the canvas. Just as the ground builds up layers, the artist builds up layers of paint on the canvas. When the paint is sufficiently dry, he places a convex object on the back of the canvas, like a sculpture, and abrades the painted surface with a sander to remove the matière. The overlapping layers of paint are then sanded away with a sander to create circular shapes reminiscent of tree rings.

장광범 Jang Kwang-Bum, Roche, 2024, acrylic on canvas, sanding, 120.5 x 80.5 cm

Red, blue and green hues, reminiscent of the natural colors of nature, emerge in the fine, honed texture, giving the canvas a sense of depth and rhythm with a gradation or complementary color contrast. The artist’s circular motifs are dreamy and subtle, changing their appearance at every moment, much like the Impressionists who saw the essence of objects in the change of color from moment to moment. Like Mother Nature, the shrinking and expanding organisms move without fixing themselves for a moment, appearing sometimes as mountain ridges, sometimes as waterscapes. The landscape of Mother Nature, which embraces the East and the West, from Monet’s water lilies to the Eastern ink landscapes, is reborn in his work. (Mael Bellec, Chief Curator of the Cernuschi Museum)

With this exhibition, the artist presents a brilliant and dreamy timescape by unveiling a series of “Roche” inspired by round and rough stones on the coast of Ploumanac’h in Brittany, France, an extension of the series “Mountain”, together with his representative series “Reflect”

Jang Gwang-Bum, a graduate of Chung-Ang University of the Arts, earned his master’s degree and doctorate in Art Theory from the University of Paris VIII, France. He has established himself in the national and international art scene by participating in art fairs such as Art Brussels and Art Paris and holding a number of solo and group exhibitions in Europe and Korea. His works are collected by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Cernuschi Museum in Paris.

Gallery Joeun
3, Itaewon-ro 55 ga-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
+82-2-790-5889

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