Arong Chung

For Chung Arong, painting is a way of discovering and giving form to the true self. Her work records a natural process of exploring identity and origins, reaching beyond questions of form, biology and mythology. A recurring narrative throughout her earlier works follows a person entering a forest alone at night and encountering a series of unexpected events. The artist was deeply inspired by a passage in Heidegger’s writing on the origin of art, in which a path through the woods leads to an open clearing. Or perhaps she had already begun working with images of forests and people, and found encouragement in the passage afterwards. The motifs of the forest and the human figure represent personal symbols that cannot be expressed through the language and logic of everyday life. Forests, empty fields and solitary figures offer glimpses of what Jung Arong’s paintings seek to explore.