Sen Chung created paintings on the wall of the staircase that leads to the Art Hall in the basement and on the ceiling of the Art Hall’s lobby. The ceiling and wall paintings, titled to the wind and to the stars and the synthetic flower scent, respectively, combine geometric abstractions and representational images, and bring to the viewer’s mind feelings of nostalgia and poetic sentimentality towards nature, as if pointing to an infinite dreamlike space behind the small, restricted space of the wall.

Sen Chung, the synthetic flower scent
2016, Oil painting on wall
the synthetic flower scent is painted on the rectangular wall along the staircase that leads to the Art Sonje Center Art Hall. Composed of the most fundamental elements of abstraction—lines, shades, a minimal color palette and negative space—that verges on the monotonous, the artist challenges viewers to deepen their aesthetic interpretations and contemplations behind the surface of the painting.

Sen Chung, to the wind and to the stars
2016, Oil painting on ceiling
to the wind and to the stars is a painting on the large circular section of the ceiling in front of the lobby of Art Sonje Center’s Art Hall. Basic elements of this painting, along with geometric abstractions unfold like allegories to the universe’s multiple planets and form a small cosmos of their own. The painting shows the artist’s interest in approaching the wonders of ancient legends and the nostalgia of an elusive, faraway world through a unique painterly language of his own.

“My personal interests as an artist reside in ancient legends, nostalgia, melancholia, and pure abstractions, which take the form of allegories, and are grounded on the thought systems of semantics and existentialism. These concepts are filtered through questions of world theory and ontology and are reconfigured through the language of painting, such as color planes and brush strokes. Within the frame of my paintings this language takes the form of symbolic and metaphorical representations as well as abstract images. The formal elements of my work include geometric abstractions such as color contrasts, rectangles, and circles, brush strokes that are moving beyond predetermined principles, and tonal changes that create an atmospheric feeling. These formal qualities, which repeatedly appear in my paintings, as if always starting anew, are visual traces that are filtered through the whirlwind of reason and emotion. The forms, compositions, and colors that result from this process come together rather intuitively with a sense of inevitability. Just like the planets that are orbiting at slightly different angles, each of my works is the result of aesthetic judgments and re-interpretations that come from multitudes of contemplative introspections. The works formulate another orbit of semantics—that of the artist’s expectations. For this purpose I combine expressive elements of Western painting on top of paintings with Eastern sentimentality. It is my objective to articulate on the surface of my paintings personal studies of “painting aesthetics” or “aesthetic judgments,” which are perennial problems of contemporary painting.”
—Artist’s note

About the artist
Born in Jeonju, Korea in 1963, Sen Chung graduated from Hong-Ik University with a BFA in Western Painting, and received Master’s degrees in Painting from Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in Dusseldorf, Germany and Chelsea College of Art & Design in London, UK. He currently lives and works in Dusseldorf. He has held solo exhibitions at venues such as Gallery EM (2016), nook gallery (2015), Galerie Duboys, Paris (2015), Tina Kim Gallery (2011), Kukje Gallery (2009), Ilmin Museum of Art (2008), and Daniel-Henry-Kahnweiler Haus in Rockenhausen (2000). He has been in group exhibitions at venues such as the 7th Liverpool Biennial “City States” (2012), Andrea Rosen Gallery New York (2009), King’s Lynn Arts Centre, UK (2008), and Saarlandmuseum, Saarbrucken, Germany (1998). He has also participated in programs such as the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2009). In Chung’s practice, multiple layers of form and content co-exist and suggest a novel, imaginative worldview. The synthesis of figuration and abstraction and the development of a highly personal and sensitive approach to the medium of painting lend his canvases an honest, natural, and timeless quality.

Art Sonje Wall Paintings
Starting this August, artists will transform a number of locations in the museum through “Art Sonje Wall Paintings.” Organized in coordination with the renovations at Art Sonje Center, which have been ongoing since the winter of 2015, the series “Art Sonje Wall Paintings” is an attempt to rediscover previously underused and unnoticed spaces in the museum.