American | Sculptor

b. 1944

Chun Kwang Young (Korean, b.1944) is a sculptor known for his constructions made out of Korean mulberry paper. He received his BFA from Hong-Ik University in Seoul in 1968, and his MFA from Philadelphia College of Art in 1971. Early in his career, Chun focused on painting, deeply influenced by Abstract Expressionism, before switching to the creation of large-scale sculptures in the mid-1990s. 



In his Aggregations, the artist creates structures made of hundreds of three-dimensional Styrofoam triangles wrapped in handmade, text-covered mulberry paper, and each piece is tied together with threads of the paper. Through these sculptures, the artist confronts the tensions between hope and reality, mass consumption and poverty, and the American Dream and traditional Asian values. 

Chun has exhibited extensively around the world at venues such as the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut, the Columbus Museum in Georgia, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, and the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. The artist has also received numerous awards, and was named artist of the year by the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul in 2001. In 2009, he was awarded the Presidential Prize in the 41st Korean Culture and Art Prize by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Korea. 



His works can be found in the collections of Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Seoul National University Museum of Art, the Museum Kunstwerk in Germany, the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C., the Malta National Museum, and the Busan Metropolitan Art Museum. He currently lives and works in South Korea.