Chun Kwang Young's three-dimensional works stand out for their fine and detailed surface structures, which the artist carefully creates using folded mulberry paper. With this Korean paper, he uses a traditional material that is characterised by an extraordinary tear resistance as well as an extremely long durability of more than 1300 years. The so-called 'hanji', produced in Korea for many centuries, has found many uses in Korean society and culture; Chun Kwang Young associates it above all with the pharmacy packaging for medicines made from old magazine and book pages, which he knows from his childhood.
Since the 1990s, the artist has been creating his "Aggregations": in meticulous and lengthy work, he wraps countless polystyrene triangles in mulberry paper. For this, he uses pages from old discarded books that are already charged with meaning as carriers of information, stories and knowledge before they are assembled like puzzle pieces into imposing works. Their molecular composition evokes multiple associations, including biological formations as well as rocks or cracked earth. The Korean and Chinese characters on the papers further reinforce this impression. Indeed, in his relief-like paintings, sculptures and installations, Chun Kwang Young focuses on socio-ecological concerns with their negative effects and anomalies, which is reflected in exuberant and undefined formations. The "aggregations", characterised by fine colour gradations and contrasts, oscillate between fragility and monumentality, nature and culture, tradition and modernity. Moreover, his works reflect both an Eastern and Western understanding of art, for Chun Kwang Young has also greatly been inspired by Abstract Expressionism since his studies in Philadelphia.
