Chung Hyun (b. 1956) has established a unique art world in the history of contemporary Korean sculpture by sculpting anti-figurative, existential human figures or fragmenting materials that are not commonly used in the category of sculpture to reveal their materiality.

Since the 1980s, after studying abroad in France, the artist has been striving to capture "human spirituality and existential energy" by creating "psychological sculptures" in which the artist's own emotions are interwoven with the sculptures, rather than creating realistically "well-made" sculptures.
From the 1980s to the 1990s, he created existential human figures as part of his work to strip away the habits that had become habitual. Furthermore, the artist rejected conventional academic methodologies and sought out materials and tools that were in harmony with his sensibilities.

Since the 2000s, he has been using non-traditional materials, mainly industrial byproducts such as iron scraps, old wooden railway sleepers, tar, and a lump of steel used to break a piece of iron, to emphasize the accumulation of time, beauty, and vitality of the materials themselves.

Chung graduated from Hongik University with a BFA and MFA in sculpture in 1986 and went to study in Paris, France. Studying in France was the beginning of the artist's unraveling of the realism of sculpture that he had acquired while studying sculpture in Korea.

With the goal of capturing inner expressions, such as his emotions, in his sculptures, rather than realistically well-crafted sculptures, he has repeatedly stripped away all the academic things he had learned and habituated to, as if in training. To do this, he abandoned the traditional sculpting tool, the carving knife, and used a wood or shovel to pound or chop the clay into shapes, using tools that resonated with his sensibilities.

From the 1980s to the 1990s, Chung began his ‘line carving’ work, in which he strips away the flesh of the material layer by layer, as if peeling away conventional habits, until only the bones remain. This anti-figurative process, which omits the specific shape of the human body, leaving only the skeleton and muscles, is not about making something precise, but about getting close to its essence and expressing the energy of existence.

As a result, the results are always inconsistent and irregular. Chung's sculptures often appear unfinished rather than finished, which connects to the artist's inner life. The artist's own thoughts can never be completely organized and are always in a state of conflict and confusion, so the more unfinished they are, the more they come into contact with the artist's inner self, giving them a sense of vibrancy and life.

Growing up in the post-war 1960s, the artist spent his childhood passing on railroad tracks traveled by freight trains carrying military supplies. This experience played an important role in his later use of 'old wooden railway sleepers' as objects, first discovering them when he was in his 30s. The wooden railway sleeper is a tree that supports the rails at the very bottom of a railroad track, bearing the immense weight of the train, and the surface of a sleeper that has seen suffering days is full of irregular scratches and scars that bear witness to the years of such labor. The artist saw the history of the trials endured by these sleepers as an art form in itself, overlapping with the harsh modern history of Korea.

Chung Hyun uses an axe to chip away at the hard surface of the sleepers, but then switches to a method that respects and reveals their texture. Using the sleepers as unprocessed as possible, he created a standing human form with a simple structure. Later, he added stainless steel or aluminum to the center of the human figure to emphasize the human spirit's ability to overcome trials.

Like railroad sleepers, another material that bears the marks of years of hard labor is a lump of steel ball. The steel ball is a large chunk of iron that serves to break the byproduct of the iron-making process into smaller pieces.

After years of crushing, its body becomes worn and scratched here and there. The surface of the ball's body is left as a marker of the trials it has endured. The artist takes a steel ball that has reached the end of its life and places it outdoors, observing the surface as it naturally changes with the weather and waxing it when it rusts.

Chung also finds waste materials that are not traditional sculpture materials, such as discarded rebars, wooden telephone poles, and pieces of wood burned in forest fires, that bear the marks of trials, and draws attention to the unique beauty of their history, while reflecting on all the ordinary lives that have silently supported society.

In addition to his three-dimensional works, Chung has also expressed his thematic awareness through drawing. For him, drawing is not an esquisse (etude) for sculpture, but, like sculpture, it is a medium to express the artist's inner feelings at the time. "Drawing is akin to tossing an emotion out there―an emotion that has condensed somewhere within my body," he says. Just as he emphasizes the inherent materiality and history of materials in his sculptures, his drawings convey the presence of the material rather than the form of the image.

Chung's drawings reveal the properties of the materials themselves rather than the artist's intervention, such as collecting discarded X-ray film and painting on it with coal tar (petroleum residue), or intentionally scratching white iron sheets and leaving them outside on a rainy day to allow the rust to run off naturally, creating traces.

In his solo exhibition "Mass" at the SeMA Nam-Seoul Museum of Art, which concluded in March this year, Chung Hyun presented a new work, Stones That Occupy, which began with the collision of materials. Chung was invited to an artist’s residency in Jangdo, Yeosu, where he spent about three months, clearing his mind through walking and focusing on the sensations of his body rather than planning his work.

Stones That Occupy began as a result of collecting stones that he stepped on while walking and bringing them to his studio one by one. The stones gathered by Chung are distinguished by their textures, varying depending on their location on the island. Some bear the harsh weathering of waves, while others retain their original rough texture. The artist transformed all of these stones by magnifying or shrinking them through 3D scanning technology, highlighting the traces of time and the unexpected collisions of diverse textures with the new technology.

More than 30 years later, Chung continues to work as a steady observer of the "uncommonness of trivial things". In the waste that has already been used up, the artist finds ordinary lives that have silently supported society through the social and temporal hardships of industrialization and urbanization. By illuminating and presenting the years of trials and vitality that these lives have undergone in the artist's own way, Chung Hyun makes us look at them as an existential reflection of everyone who lives faithfully with the time that is consumed.

"I am a person who works with my intestines and guts. Some people work with their head, some with their heart, some with their hands, but I feel like my work comes out of me when what I absorb is ripened and digested inside."

Chung Hyun graduated from Hongik University with a BFA and MFA in sculpture and furthered his studies at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1986. Since his first solo exhibition at Galerie Won in 1992, he has held more than 20 solo exhibitions in Paris, New York, and Tokyo, including leading Korean institutions such as the SeMA Nam-Seoul Museum of Art (2023-2024), Seongbuk Museum of Art (2022), and Kumho Museum of Art (2018).

He was selected as the ‘Artist of the Year 2006’ at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, the ‘1st AICA Korea Award’ at the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art Korea in 2009, and the ‘Artist Today 2004’ at the Kim Chong Yung Museum, and as the representative artist of Korea to commemorate the 130th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and France, he exhibited at the Jardin du Palais-Royal and Domaine national de Saint-Cloud in Paris, France. His works are in the collections of major museums and galleries in Korea and abroad, including the MMCA and the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art.

References

• 정현, Chung Hyun (Artist Website)
• 서울시립 남서울미술관, 덩어리 (SeMA Nam-Seoul Museum of Art, Mass) :
• 경기도미술관, DMZ아트프로젝트 – 다시, 평화 (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, DMZ Art Project - Peace, Again) :
• 성북구립미술관, 시간의 초상: 정현 (Seongbuk Museum of Art, The Portrait of Time: CHUNG HYUN) :
• 학고재 갤러리, 정현 (Hakgojae Gallery, Chung Hyun) :