Space 776 is excited to participate in the Art Miami art fair for the second year in a row. The show will feature new lacquer paintings and an installation by artist Rimm Chae as well as Kwang Young Chun's sculptural compositions called Aggregations created in the early 2000s with hundreds of paper-wrapped parcels.

​

Rimm Chae: (b. 1963) received the Leonardo Da Vinci Award in Florence, Italy. Her works of art were also accepted and exhibited at the Start Art Fair held at London’s Saatchi Gallery in 2017. She became the first Korean to win the SOLO Award at the Artexpo New York. The International André Malraux Association also awarded her at the International Cultural Heritage Fair held in Paris. She has successfully held numerous solo exhibitions in Seoul, New York, and Paris. Her artwork has also been well-received at leading art fairs in Miami, Barcelona, Singapore, Cologne, Taipei, London, Brussels, and Toulouse. She exhibited at Art Miami in 2021. 

​

Based on traditional Korean color schemes known as obangsaek and ogansaek (green, light blue, bright red, sulfur yellow, and violet), The “Mountain and Island” series presents variegated expressions of lines that characterize mountains and islands. Obangsaek, an alluring palette of hues comprising yellow, blue, red, white and black, is an essential part of Korea’s traditional color culture that embodies the harmony and integration of yin and yang as well as the principles of nature. An unhinged amalgamation of real and recalled scenery painted in the language of colors, “Mountain and Island” sings of hope through its dreamy yet warm vibes. Reminiscent of saekdong (traditional multicolored stripes) and sometimes rainbows, the artwork’s unique combination of hues and the innate texture of ottchil (Korean lacquer) conjure up our yearning to soar again.

​

​

Kwang Young Chun: (b. 1944) studied at Hong-Ik University in Korea and received his MFA from the Philadelphia College of Art. Prior to 1995, when the artist began working with mulberry paper, he painted in a manner influenced by American and European Abstract Expressionism. Chun has been named Artist of the Year by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul and was awarded the Presidential Prize in the 41st Korean Culture and Art Prize by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. In 2014, Chun authored Mulberry Mindscapes, a monograph articulating the breadth and diversity of his half-century-long artistic career. The artist’s works are in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Seoul National University Museum of Art, and the Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, among others. He lives and works in Seoul, South Korea. At the beginning of his career, Chun was working primarily in earth tones before he started experimenting with bright colors. Aggregation 02-N119, 2002 is one of the rare examples of that, features pages from primary school textbooks, some predating the Korean War. Dyed with natural ingredients such as gardenia seeds and teas, these textbooks commemorate a period of educational humanism in Korea.

​

 "To me, the triangular pieces wrapped in mulberry paper are basic units of information, the basic cells of a life that only exists in art, as well as in individual social events or historical facts. By attaching these pieces one by one to a two-dimensional surface, I wanted to express how basic units of information can both create harmony and conflict. This became an important milestone in my long artistic journey to express the troubles of a modern man driven to a devastated life by materialism, endless competition, conflict, and destruction. After almost twenty years, I was now able to communicate with my own gestures and words." -Chun