Sculptor Chung Hyun has been selected as 'artist of the year 2006.' Established in 1995, the 'Artist of the Year' award is given annually to the artist who has shown the most outstanding activity in representing the Korean art world. Selected by curators of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, the artist is given the opportunity to hold a solo exhibition at the Museum the following year and Chung Hyun is the first to be given the award in the field of sculpture.
In his work, Chung Hyun has mainly focused on the human body. Although most contemporary artists have experimented by making various attempts to express facial features, Chung has constantly explored the significance of art form through the human body. His works seem unfinished, therefore appearing rough and crude. However, internally, his works contain genuine anguish for life and human beings and displays humans as individual entities standing on their own.
The artist's interpretation of sculpture is "power" and "energy." The artist, while expressing power through the dynamism of the human body, discovers power from fortuity of the courses of creation and physical substantiality of the pieces, such as freshness discovered in the trivial, power of life exuded from the raw, unpredictable images, abruptness and primitive violence, etc.. For him, the trivial are remnants of civilization, such as railroad tie, asphalt concrete and stones, which are distant from the traditional materials of sculpture. The artist mentions the importance of material in his work by saying that he 'plays with the materials, rather than fighting against them 'in order to bring out the properties of the materials as much as possible.
The exhibition offers us a glimpse of Chung's art world from past to present. It features 60 sculptures and 60 drawings from four different time periods, showing us the changes in form and material.
His first piece was created between 1985 and the early 1990s, which was the period of his studies in France. He is expressing the dynamic human body with several compressed lines that do not display volume, such as bone structures and muscles, etc. by distorting the actual figures. The tension in this piece is accentuated by manila hemp in plaster and tautly stretching it over the surface.
The second was created in the years of 1995~1999. This bronze head and torso without eyes, nose and mouth is contorted and shows many vague traces to express the pain of human existence.
The third was created in the last 1990s to the early 2000s. In this piece, where he worked with railroad tie, the human body is almost completely dismantled to border on abstract. The wood torn into pieces and railroad tie cut with ax and attached in entanglement represent human as a being that has been predestined to endure stoic life. This phase of his work is significant not only in terms of the size of his works, but also the introduction of new materials.
The fourth work was created in 2004~2005 by using asphalt concrete, unprocessed stones and coal lumps.
The works made of asphalt concrete are human figures created by combining masses violently cut up into pieces with an electric saw. They strongly illustrate only the physical substantiality of the material used. Also from unprocessed stones and coal lumps, the artist produced abstract figures.
Through his art world, Chung Hyun, who adds contemporary interpretation into traditional sculpture and brings abandoned materials into the world of art, let us look back at the aesthetics of 'novelty' which is spreading out as a craze in present times.