DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Awards │ DOOSAN Art Center DOOSAN Gallery

Heemin Chung, the winner of the 2022 DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Award in Visual Arts, is an artist who explores the new characteristics of today's images and ways of experiencing them through the traditional medium of painting. She emphasizes the gap and heterogeneity between the material world and the digital environment filled with overflowing images, and questions the way the individual exists in the changes and events that technology causes. What stands out in particular is the balanced development of the depth of media research on the post-internet sense and painting. Artist Heemin Chung breaks away from the traditional expression methods and fixed screens of painting, and creates her own screens through material experiments that model medium in an atypical way. She also uses printing or airbrush technology, and furthermore, she is showing notable activities, expanding her work to video work and spatial installation using 3D graphics.

Heeming Chung, Iris, 2021, Acrylic, oil and gel medium on canvas, 194 × 145cm

Heeming Chung, Whispering Violet, 2021, Acrylic and gel medium on canvas, 194 × 112 cm

Heemin Chung, When Our Palmline Meets, 2021, Acrylic and gel medieum, surgical steel chain on canvas, 260 × 194cm

Heeming Chung, Whispering Violet 02, 2022, Acrylic and inkjet transferred gel medium on canvas, 72 × 61 cm

Heeming Chung, When We Get By, 2022, Acrylic and inkjet transferred gel medium on canvas, 46 × 61cm

Education

2015
M.F.A. Korea National University of Arts, Seoul, KR

2012
B.F.A. Hongik University, Seoul, KR

Solo Exhibitions

2024
UMBRA, Thaddaeus Ropac, London, UK

2023
Receivers, DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, KR

2022
How Do We Get Lost in the Forest, P21, Seoul, KR

2021
Seoulites, Museumhead, Seoul, KR

2020
If We Ever Meet Again, 021 Gallery, Daegu, KR

2019
On Vacation, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, KR
An Angel Whispers, P21, Seoul, KR

2018
UTC-7:00 JUN 3PM, On the Table, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, KR

2016
Yesterday’s Blues, Projectspace Sarubiadabang, Seoul, KR

Group Exhibitions

2023
Sometimes it sticks to my body, WESS, Seoul, KR
Myths of Our Time, Thaddaeus Ropac, Seoul, KR

2022
We, On the Rising Wave, Busan Biennale, Busan , KR
V8, Cylinder X N/A, Seoul, KR
Your Present, Pace Seoul, Seoul, KR

2021
Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Nam-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, KR
Folding City, Eulji art center, Seoul, KR

2020
Catastrophic Sensation, Soorim Art Center, Seoul, KR
Painting, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, KR
Light and Crystalline, One and J Gallery, Seoul, KR
The Parallel Universes of Prufrock, Rainbowcube, Seoul, KR

2019
The Best World Possible, Platform L, Seoul, KR
Psychedelic Nature, Artspace Boan, Seoul, KR
Korean Young Artist: Liquid Glass Sea, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, KR
Kumho Young Artist: The 69 Times of Sunrise, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, KR
Tarte, Audio Visual Pavillion, Seoul, KR

2018
Allover, Hite Collection, Seoul, KR
EVE, Samyuk Building, Seoul, KR
Gray Navy Black, Korean Cultural Center in Hong-kong, HK
Subscale, Gallery Lux, Seoul, KR

2017
Sticky Forever, Keep in Touch, Seoul, KR
Snowscreen, archive Bomm, Seoul, KR

2015
VisitorQ, Post Territory Ujeongkuk, Seoul, KR

Residency

2023
Art Space Geumcheon, Seuol, KR

2022
SeMA Nanji Residency, Seoul, KR

2020
MMCA Residency Goyang, Goyang, KR

2019
Incheon Art Plaform, Incheon, KR
2018
K’arts Studio, Seoul, KR

Award

2022
The 13th DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Awards Visual Art, DOOSAN Yonkang Foundation, Seoul, KR

Jury's Statement

Korea to gain new insight and take a leap forward—that the residency opportunity could be more meaningful for Chung compared to other artists who have had more international exposure. In addition, the small proportion of previously winning painters to photographers or video artists, due to the award’s emphasis on contemporaneity, contributed to Heemin Chung’s selection.

A rapidly growing painter since her debut in 2015, Heemin Chung has used the medium of painting to investigate the changes in the way images exist and are perceived since the popularization of digital devices. Among contemporary artists who deal with the production/circulation/consumption of images, Heemin Chung stands out in that she combines her research of post-internet sensibilities with that of the painting medium in considerable depth and balance. In particular, the fact that she explores the properties of digital images and the resulting mediumistic and perceptive changes through a traditional medium makes Heemin Chung an exemplary contemporary painter. More than that, the sheer quantity of work Chung can produce for each exhibition and that she introduces new formal experiments every time raises expectations for the possibility of her continued advancement. For instance, Chung represents the various aspects of digital imagery by piecemealing fragments of different textures in a thin layer over canvas. However, the fact that such an approach does not become a recurring style or stay within the boundaries of the canvas is what makes Chung’s work so eclectic. That is, Chung’s media experiment revolves around but is not confined to painting. Namely, her experiments extend across all media in the forms of physical variation of the canvas, arrangement of multiple canvases on a plane, combination [of painting] with video, expanding the form of a flat surface by rolling or suspending it, and more than that, utilizing three-dimensionality, video, and virtual reality.

The jury hopes this award and the overseas residency opportunity do not become another task to complete or pressure to perform for Heemin Chung. Rather, the jury looks forward to the award providing the artist with the time for internal revitalization and a springboard to launch ahead so that she can pause, catch her breath, and slowly recuperate into her journey for her future practice and methodology. The jury extends its deep congratulations to Heemin Chung.

Jury Seong Eun Kim, Jiyeon Kim, Mun Hye Jin