AGGREGATIONS

Press release

From March 5 to April 5, 2021 ASKERI GALLERY will host the first in Russia personal exhibition of the world famous Korean artist Kwang Yong Chan, timed to coincide with the gallery's anniversary, ASKERI GALLERY - 5 years.

ASKERI GALLERY will present Kwan Yong Chan's most recognizable series of works - AGGREGATIONS: objects consisting of small triangular shapes wrapped in silk paper, often dyed with tea or pigment. The artist is attracted by the idea of ​​a fusion of methods, materials and sensations associated with his cultural identity and conceptual freedom.
Kwan Yong Chan refers to codes, symbols and systems that all objects around us are endowed with. “For me, triangular pieces wrapped in silk paper are the main units of information, the main cells of life that exists in art, individual social or historical events. By connecting different parts, one by one, attaching them to a two-dimensional surface, I wanted to show how basic units of information can create harmony and conflict, ”says the artist.

The paper triangles are an allusion to Kwang Yong Chan's childhood memory of how medicinal herbs were stored in the local doctor's office: similar bundles hung from the ceiling. Recipes are written on the memory sticks from childhood - units of information - which far from everyone can read. Each medicine is used in a different way: what is salvation for one person can become a deadly poison for another. Not knowing the code, not being able to read the symbol that is indicated on the paper, you can only rely on luck.

The artist's works resemble the arrangement of "bundles" of medicinal herbs, become an essential expression and a personal document of the desire to consider these triangular units as a minimal source of information. Each triangle, inscribed with Korean and Chinese characters, was made from old documents, records of different ages and authorship.

For Kwan, the triangles that make up his work become a fragile repository of information, the text on which is not always related to medicine. His idea goes much deeper than even the very possibility of being physically cured. He takes paper on which accounting reports are recorded, personal and even love notes are written, the texts of books are printed, everything that is connected with sensations, with human feelings. Kwan Yong Chan plays with words, creating one whole statement: combining, for example, place names with a phrase from Confucius' Analects and a fragment of a love message, the artist gets new meanings.

Kwan Yong Chan's works of art are metaphors with many interpretations and meanings: bundles containing life-saving herbs; whirlwinds of emotions and memories; life, captured on paper and collected in one beautiful composition; large utterances consisting of scraps of phrases; stunning, voluminous, bright and deep AGGREGATIONS (aggregations, unions, conglomerates) that can tell us about us, perhaps even more than ourselves.

Artists