Clarence Chun
Published August 31, 2020
When taking a passing look at Clarence Chun's paintings, the impression of movement and gestural application of paint is an immediate effect on the viewer. What isn't so apparent is that these ebbing and flowing stripes and globs of paint result from the slowing down of a once manic process to introspections of "speed, time, and memory." According to artist Arvin Flores, Chun creates "impressions of speed and motion under the design of machine precision applied all the while with slow painting, with traditional means of painterly layering and transparency, with classical perspective rendering and composition, drawing and stenciling..."
Chun explains this slow process as a series of layers that serve as the structure of all of his current work. What starts as a quick intitial layer of stripes from left-over colors proceeds to meticulously thought-out areas. The viewer will recognize these as gestural marks of paint floating above and riding on the lanes and waves of expansive color. They turn out to be images from various sources that include comic books, architecture, and Chinese landscapes. They are partially rendered and dissipate into the material. It's metonymy, an old Cubist trick, which Chun represents as a field/screen of fleeting information, somewhat similar to moments lost within a haze of memory.
Clarence Chun is a Filipino visual artist with an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in NY and a BFA, Cum Laude from the University of Houston School of Art in Texas, as well as a Fellowship at the Yale University School of Art. He currently lives and works in Manila and Honolulu. He has had selected exhibits at National Museum of the Philippines, Ayala Museum Artist Space, Honolulu Museum of Art, Artery Artist Space, Gallery Big, Blanc Gallery, Vinyl on Vinyl Gallery, West Gallery and Front Gallery, Houston.
