Sung Chankyung, Untitled(2000s) 124×42×43cm, Mortorcycle parts, electric fan parts, metal chair parts, metal hanger, scrap, Image provided by Um Museum.

The exhibition Sung Changkyung presents a collection of items from the archive of a late poet Chankyung Sung (1930-2013), encompassing his poems, drawings, and objets. The poet devoted his life to collecting discarded objects. He looked at the value of things that reached the end of life with traces of ‘extinction’ as if through a ‘magnifying glass’. He explored the aesthetic of resurrection and circulation from the worthlessness of discarding, embodying it as the art of everyday life. He projected his special thoughts on things through the subversive and simple metaphors, wit, and romantic gaze. The poet contemplated the overlooked world of things in the Eungamdong Orphanage for Materials, which resembled a microcosm of things that were used up. Pondering over people, daily life, and the future, he often criticized the ironies of the society of his time. Sometimes, he also summoned objects as poetic and narrativized beings, resurrecting them as formative materials endowed with emotive aesthetics. It was done through romantic and aesthetic reflections.

This exhibition presents more than fifty two- and three-dimensional artworks by Chankyung Sung as a free artist beyond the boundaries of media and expressive methods. In addition, the exhibition also presents new works by contemporary artists Sungseok Ahn (b.1985, new media and installation) and Hyeran Choi (b.1989, painting and installation), taking the poet’s work as the key motif. Ahn’s 3D animation video installation and Choi’s mural construct a multi-layered context for the exhibition, which paves the way to a rich archive exhibition that encompasses the harmony of the unexpected use of media and expressions, matching different genres of poetry and visual art as well as the deceased artist and living artists.

As a whole, the exhibition invites the viewers to encounter the attempts by two contemporary artists from different artistic realms to communicate via their visual languages with the artistic remains of a late artist by engaging with the poet that one cannot meet ever again and the mysterious micro-world of everyday objects that become extraordinary phenomena that seem to have personal characters. In the exhibition, it will be also meaningful to appreciate the perceptual and sensual reproduction of minds that show the circulation of experiences, words, and thoughts of the artists.

For Further Info : Um Museum