Helen Chung
Don’t Forget to Remind Me to Forget

November 11  to December 16, 2023

Sorry I Didn't Love You Enough. 2019. Oil on canvas. 22 x 28 inches

MORE INFO

Track 16 proudly presents an exhibition of new work by Helen Chung, Don’t Forget to Remind Me to Forget, including paintings on both canvas and paper. The exhibition opens November 11th and will be on view through December 16, 2023. 

The exhibition will include work from an ongoing series of paintings Chung began working on in 2019. While the finished works bear little resemblance to the kinds of word and text paintings not uncommon in contemporary art (the word is less the ‘object’, or more accurately ‘objective’ here, than the thought), viewers should not be surprised if letters and words seem to disentangle themselves from the whole, complicating and notionally unravelling the composition. The artist attributes these words and phrases to “apologies to myself” or (less judgmentally) self-counseling precepts she found herself returning to in the wake of a delayed diagnosis of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in late 2018. Yet the initial impulse to transform words into images began well before her ADHD diagnosis. 

For sales and inquiries email sean@track16.com

“The idea began to take shape (so to speak) as I began coming across those ‘CAPTCHA’ tests that pop up when websites demand proof you’re not a robot. I always found the shapes of those computer-generated free-style texts amusing. They seemed to be the way babies would write before they could make straight lines or form and scale alphabet letters in consistent sizes to accidentally form words. And then I was also reminded on the poem, “Alphabets” by Seamus Heaney, in which he reminds us how learning alphabets of any language starts with pictures or images first: “ … the forked stick that they call a Y / … A swan’s neck and swan’s back / Make the 2, …,” and so on.

Helen Chung in her studio (2023).

In Between The Scoldings I Was Very Loved. 2023. Acrylic on paper. Framed. 22.5 x 28 inches.

MORE INFO

“I started writing down phrases I used to habitually tell myself, ostensibly to be rid of the self-reproach that was on automatic pilot most of my life. These phrases guided the palette, composition and mood for the paintings. Then words and letters were repeated, stretched, overlapped and reshaped, to where they began to function merely as design elements for the image. The words lost some of their emotional charge as they became abstracted during the repetition and reframing; perhaps I discovered a self-help tool (as Beuys had suggested), albeit temporarily.”

The paintings in the exhibition are executed in acrylic and oil on canvas, and oil on paper in wide-ranging palettes, some bold and others more muted, in varying degrees of texture and more transparent layers. Letters—or what might be their rudiments—evolve as much as emerge within compositional spaces of varying density and complexity. Words—or their lexical antecedents (or descendants)—mesh into compositions carrying their own messages as some remove from the deficits and distractions that may have been their starting point. A smaller group of slightly more dense and textured works pay tribute to some of her favorite abstract painters—e.g., Brice Marden, Joan Mitchell, and Philip Guston.

Maybe Had I Known I Would've Chosen Exactly What I Have. 2023. Acrylic and oil on canvas. 35 x 46

MORE INFO

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Korea, Chung migrated to the United States with her family when she was about 12 years old. After graduating from Art Center College of Design, Chung worked internationally, designing shoes for almost two decades, before returning to Los Angeles to devote herself to making art. She works in many media, including painting, sculpture, photography (and more), and is well-known for her portraiture. Recent exhibitions include the Tetrapod Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Track 16 Gallery, Los Angeles (2021 and 2022), Rio Hondo College Art Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); Wedge Gallery at Woodbury University (2016); West L.A. College (2015). Group shows include Praz de la Vallade, Los Angeles; Blum & Poe (now Blum) Los Angeles; also Berkshire Gardens, Rory Devine Fine Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Torrance Art Museum, Lava Project, and Andrew Shire Gallery.

Helen Chung lives and works in Los Angeles.