“Ideal Cliff” Installation view ©Pipe GalleryPipe Gallery presents Seokwoo Chung (b.1981)’s solo exhibition, “Ideal Cliff,” through August 2. The 15 new works introduced in this exhibition focus on “light” as an experimental exploration that combines the fundamental energy of nature with the artist’s envisioned utopia.
As the title “Ideal Cliff” suggests, the texture and surface of cliff strata, which have been formed over many years, are captured through natural processes such as erosion and weathering. These processes lead to irregularities and changes in the environment, which are accumulated in the vertical and horizontal joints and surface textures and are connected to painting through various experiments. One representative piece is RGB Column#1~3, a canvas over 13 meters tall that was exposed to the elements throughout the production process, recording the changes in pigments caused by strong winds, sunlight, snow, and rain. In these long-term and wild experiments, the artist focused on “light and color” more than anything else.
However, in this exhibition, he does not react sensitively to or rely heavily on the colors of the pigments themselves. Instead, he aims to showcase the multi-layered manifestation of light and color that is difficult to express with oil paint alone, using the scattering and absorption of light that changes according to the interference and reflection of light and the formation of texture structures, rather than the color emitted by the pigment itself. This ideal experiment by the artist leads us beyond the external beauty to the genuine meaning and authenticity contained within.
