Chung Seoyoung

The work of one of the representative sculptors in contemporary Korean art, who began her work in earnest in the mid-1990s

The monographic survey of Chung Seoyoung’s (b.1964) sculptural practice from the 1990’s up to the present is published in conjunction and response to Chung’s retrospective exhibition held at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) in 2022. Chung Seoyoung is a sculptor who has pioneered the discourse and the artistic practice around ‘things’ and their status and relations in flux over time, and is regarded as a representative artist who demonstrated the turn towards contemporaneity in the 1990’s Korean art scene. 

More than an exhibition documentation, the publication traces how the problems of the world that the artist deals with have transitioned by considering Chung Seoyoung’s sculptural practice in both synchronic and diachronic manner. In the artist’s engagement in the physical paths through which the world is perceived and her interest in things as manifestation of the  world's relations converted to matter, Chung expands the scope of sculpture, and simultaneously searches for ways to remember the vernacular of sculpture.

The book includes essays written by art historian Jihan Jang, curator and art historian Chus Martinez, and a conversation with artist Sung Hwan Kim. Their in-depth research and diverse perspectives not only put forth novel interpretations of Chung Seoyoung’s oeuvre, but also recast both subtle and major shifts in Korean contemporary art that is yet to be widely discussed.

• As an artist, Chung Seoyoung played a leading role in the establishment of “Korean Contemporary Art” as a new category of contemporary art in the 1990s. Jihan Jang, art historian, has been awarded the SeMA-HANA Art Criticism Award for 2019. Chus Martinez, curator and art historian, is currently the director of the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel. Sung Hwan Kim is a contemporary artist who grew up in South Korea and is currently based in New York and Hawaii.