Kyungwoo Chun: Face of Face – Exhibition

5th April 2018 News, Photo Exhibitions 4122

We are glad to inform you about the upcoming exhibition “Face of Face” by Kyungwoo Chun. The exhibition features photographs from the series “Face of Face” and “The Weight”.

KYUNGWOO CHUN
FACE OF FACE

Opening April 12, 2018, 7 pm
Exhibition until June 2, 2018

For the “Face of Face” series, Kyungwoo Chun invited young actors for a performance in his studio. The artist positioned the participants in front of a desk with pencil and paper. The task of the participants was to close their eyes, to focus on their appearance and themselves to portray themself. During the performance Kyungwoo Chun photographed the participants in a long time exposure. The resulting portrait he then overlaid with the drawn self-portrait of the respective person. (Face of Face). In the portraits we see concentrated and completely absorbed people. The actors, who usually take on the role of other people were completely alone.

Face of Face © Kyungwoo Chun

The title of the second series in this exhibition is “The Weight”. This project has been realized as part of the residency program at Musee MAC VAL in Val-de-Marne, France. For this project Kyungwoo Chun contacted students at a school near the museum for non-francophone students. They recently arrived in France with different cultural backgrounds. Before the students attend regular classes, they receive intensive French lessons for one year.

The artist asked the students to form teams to carry each other as long as they could. During this time, the artist photographed the protagonists in a long time exposure. What interests him in these portraits is the emotional resonance of the moment. To carry a person on his back and give each other both physically as well as mentally support, promotes the willingness to trust each other and to adjust to each other. The artist plays with the traditional portrait photography, the photos are poetically blurred by the long exposure time. The softness of the images reflects the emotional intensity that students experience in these situations of sharing. The language of the body takes the place of speech and shows the fragile balance of several bodies interacting around cultural and language barriers. Kyungwoo Chun is interested in the relationship of adolescents to their bodies, which appear disproportionately early in their experience.