T-Yong Chung

T-Yong Chung (Tae-gu, South Korea, 1977) lives and works in Milan. Classicism, Arte Povera and minimalism are three elements that keep returning in his sculptural and installation work, where the tension between the fullness of Western culture and the essentiality of Eastern culture create a full formal balance. The artist uses waste materials, such as antique chairs, rusty tools and pieces of sheet metal, that he dismantles and reassembles, smooths and polishes, giving them a new identity, with a permanent link to the dignity of their past. He is famous for his sculptures depicting human faces, made of plaster, ceramics, resin, wax and bronze. He draws inspiration from Greek and Roman classicism, but also from contemporary figures of European culture, that are relevant in his day-to-day life. His sculpture busts are characterized by a clean cut that is handmade and then refined and this creates an  abstraction and they evoke an idea of absence, an uninterrupted presence. Through this process of subtraction and cancellation- gestures that evoke generative acts in the eastern culture- the artworks reveal their essence in the research of different perspectives, different spaces, different identities.

T-Yong Chung graduated in Environmental Sculpture at the University of Seoul and then he graduated in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. From 2007 to today his works have been presented in different personal exhibitions in Florence, Bologna, Milan and Naples and in collective exhibitions in important spaces such as Careof, Milan; Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea of Monfalcone; Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea in Trento, Neon/fdv, Milan and Bologna, but also in Tokyo and Seoul. He took part in many artistic residency and workshops such as Museo Carlo Zauli in Faenza and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice.