T-Yong Chung was born in Tae-gu South Korea in 1977, but has lived and worked in Italy and specifically Milan for a number of years. He has had solo exhibitions at Neon>fdv in Milan and NOT gallery in Naples, as well as several group shows in galleries throughout Europe and the world such as: Careof, Shimbashi Station, Vianuova Arte Contemporanea, and Ar/ ge Kunst to name a few.
His work often explores quotidian reality by resolving to reduce banal objects to the essence of their being. In Chung’s hands objects are thus transformed through the most simple of gestures like painting them all the same monochromatic color – often gold or silver – or manipulating them to form new things that apparently have no obvious sense. Actions that ultimately serve to challenge our preconceived ideas about how such objects are used.
For his show B612 at SRISA Gallery, T-Yong Chung continues to look at the nature of everyday objects by investigating the duality between reality and fiction. It is enough to consider the show’s title, which recalls the story The Little Prince (1943) and specifically the small house-sized asteroid B612. A title that informs us that Chung is not necessarily interested in re-producing reality for its own sake, but rather shrouding the real in another set of clothes – just as the Turkish astronomer who discovered the asteroid in the Little Prince convinces people he is telling the truth by dressing like a Westerner – in order to invite us to question ‘the facts’ as they pertain to ideas of xenophobia, racism, and ignorance.