Exhibition Information

			Sweet Temptations of Candies

Jin Hyup Song (art critic)

 

Sunjoo Chung’s artwork focuses on a series of enlarged candies created in a variety of colors and shapes. Chung’s dazzling candies overwhelm the gallery exhibition with their intense colors, decorative patterns and appealing surface slogans. These charming candies, originally cheap grocery store items, are now attempting to strut into the fashionable art world. Chung’s glittering candies dominate the canvas with their large size and confront the audience directly by popping out at eye level. The gallery is now heating up with an energetic sugar rush, the effect popping out everywhere from these giant candies.

Chung wisely points out that the reason why people of today have a narrow perspective is, "a result of constant and repetitive exposure to familiar and uniform images." Global capitalism employs several trendy visual forms according to its own economic interests, then social media pours these forms out like a flood into modern visual culture to promote mass consumption. People may claim that they have chosen and consumed their own favorite candy color and taste, however in reality there are only slight variations of available choices from the visual orders given by the media. The visual norms created through global capitalism and propagated by media continue to be the main forms of production and consumption of daily goods, they also rule the visual culture and artistic appreciation in contemporary society. Chung's candies manifest the idea that the creativity of the art world and the taste of the art public have now sunk to the low level of cheap candy packaging.

In the gallery Chung's candies powerfully radiate the sweet and seductive visual trends of global capitalism, they present the polka dot patterns that once enticed the fashion world in Paris, the skeleton motifs of young designers in London and the hipster slogans from New York. Enhanced by chemical dyes and sweetened by refined sugar, a glamorous image of candy will be projected on large billboards across each corner of the world. The immediate sweetness and dazzling appearance of candy will eventually blind and paralyze the eyes and tongues of contemporary society.

Continuously and repeatedly exposed to the invincible sweetness of this candy people have developed predictable tastes and narrow artistic judgment. In art galleries which are thought to be more artistic and creative than grocery stores, the temptation of sugary candy is powerful, gradually taking over the space. Wandering through food outlets one can see that real candy products are disposed of when arriving to their expiration date; however the sweet color of candy may indefinitely overwhelm contemporary life as a new powerful taste.

(Source = Gallery Mark)