The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (until 27th November) kicks off at the weekend (but the press days have already started). As this is the first post-pandemic edition of the Biennale there are a lot of expectations about the works on display at the Arsenale, the Giardini and in the rest of the city.
Among the most interesting collateral events there is a highly recommended multidisciplinary project entitled "Times Reimagined" at Palazzo Contarini Polignac.
The project combines art, architecture, and artisanal crafts as well, and includes 40 large-scale mulberry-paper reliefs, sculptures and installations created by Korean artist Chun Kwang Young, plus a site-specific architectural structure, the Hanji House, designed by Italian architect and urban planner Stefano Boeri.
Located in the gardens of the palazzo, the Hanji House is visible from the Grand Canal and dialogues with the buildings surrounding it and with the installations inside the palazzo.
As you may remember from previous posts, "Hanji" is the traditional Korean handmade paper made from the inner bark of Broussonetia papyrifera, colloquially known as paper mulberry. Due to its great resistance, hanji is also known as the "thousand years paper".
Boeri's structure is conceived as a foldable pavilion built with timber and a textile membrane on soil. It is a practical model of "paper-tree architecture" based on geometrical shapes and it is a sort of conceptualized version of Chun's eco-friendly paper art transformed into a habitable space.
The design is inspired by the playful yet meditative practice of folding paper in an infinite number of ways: to create the structure, Boeri looked at ancient East Asian practices of paper-folding and tangram and at simple geometric modularity. The result is a combination of volumes - four pyramids on the top of a parallelepiped, defining a planar surface shaped as a regular rhombus in the middle. The house is also an introduction to the theme of the infinite as it can be folded in an infinite number of ways.
From the outside, the Hanji House looks like a mysterious and futuristic structure, almost a light box or lantern illuminating the Renaissance architecture; while inside visitors will discover an immersive space with a real-time interactive art installation developed by media artist Calvin J. Lee, who transformed triangular hanji packages created by artist Chun Kwang Young into virtual form.
Hanji is at the core of Chun Kwang Young's creations: the paper used in his art is not mass-produced, but it is a handmade artisanal product.
His works consist in complex assemblages made employing "basic units of information" or "basic cells of life", that is triangular forms in various sizes, cut from Polystyrene, foam or wood, wrapped in mulberry paper and tied with hand-twisted paper strings.
The resulting sculptures are inspired by a childhood memory of small mulberry paper medicine packages with name cards hanging from the ceiling of a Chinese medicine doctor's pharmacy to protect them from insects.
The sculptures on display in Venice are inspired by the theme of the interconnectedness between living beings and the socio-ecological values of their relationships.
Inside the palazzo, the sculptures create a new sort of interconnection between different planes: Chun Kwang Young's textured topographical maps of rocky landscapes, at times featuring delicate colour gradations, take viewers on a journey through space and symbolically refer to the conflicts that regulate our modern lives.
At times these alien formations look like deformed giant mushrooms, alien plants, viruses or ruins from a city destroyed after an apocalypse.
They expand inside the rooms of the palazzo, creating vertical columns, spheres, or giant clam-shaped configurations, while the works hung on walls create portals, powerful optical illusions that mesmerise visitors with their three-dimensional power.
Chun Kwang Young's works also create another contrast between the physical and digital realms: the folding and assembling of those tiny hanji packages that compose the basic units of his work requires a long time, but in our digital society paper is not valued that much, and books - representing knowledge, wisdom and memory - are often dimissed as something ancient and out of fashion, in favour of everything that is digital and immaterial.
Books have a central role in Chun Kwang Young's art instead as his reliefs, sculptures and installations, are made from paper taken from discarded second-hand books that were about 100 years old.
The paper used in his works has therefore had a previous life that existed in the form of book as a storage of knowledge and information, and that now has taken a completely new life.
Chun Kwang Young's works have only one title, "Aggregation", but they tackle a variety of sub-themes. Through his works the artist points indeed at the anxieties and uncertainties at the core of human existence.
The sculptures also hide a socio-ecological and metaphorical message, pointing at human-caused decline of biodiversity, disruption of ecosystems and increase in diseases, as the artist urges visitors to meditate and heal through his time consuming works, but also to find a new strength and act in arts or architecture, urban planning or academia, to protect our planet and our existence.
Image credits for this post
1. Palazzo Contarini Polignac for "Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined", 2022. Courtesy CKY Studio, Copyright © Alice Clancy.
2 and 3. Installation views of the Hanji House for "Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined", 2022, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice. Courtesy CKY Studio, Copyright © Alice Clancy.
4 - 11. Installation views "Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined", 2022, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice. Courtesy CKY Studio, Copyright © Alice Clancy.
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