Emily Chun

Emily Chun is a writer and a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Stanford University.

June 2026ArtSeen

John Hee Taek Chae: Third

By

John Hee Taek Chae’s new body of work at D.D.D.D. can be broadly sorted into three groups: closely cropped, caliginous portraits of masked non-white Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents; a row of double-sided banner paintings installed like flags protruding from the wall; and large paintings of Boschian, carnivalesque compositions featuring skeletons, masked figures, and light eschatological iconography.

John Hee Taek Chae, Behemoth and Leviathan, 2026. Oil on linen, 48 × 36 inches. Courtesy the artist and D.D.D.D..

November 2025ArtSeen

Man Ray: When Objects Dream

By

One of the rayographs currently on display at the massive exhibition Man Ray: When Objects Dream at the Metropolitan Museum of Art captures fern leaves, interspersed with what look like fluffy dandelions. It is one of the exhibition’s sixty-one rayographs, displayed with around a hundred other works, including some of his most iconic films, paintings, and sculptures.

Man Ray, Le violon d’Ingres, 1924. Gelatin silver print, 19 ⅛ × 14 ¾ inches. © Man Ray 2015 Trust; Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bluff Collection. Promised Gift of John A. Pritzker. Photo: Ian Reeves.

May 2024ArtSeen

Kimsooja: Meta-Painting

By
A veteran Korean artist who has been assiduously experimenting with light, textiles, and sound in various mediums over the past four decades, Kimsooja (b. 1957) brings these long-standing interests to bear in her new exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar.
Kimsooja, To Breathe, 2015. Chromatic spectrum projection with mirror platform floor, dimensions variable. Gallery installation: 3 1/2 x 265 3/4 x 354 1/4 inches, duration: 10 min, 32 sec. Edition of 3. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.

July/August 2023ArtSeen

Kang Seok Ho: Deep is the rising sun, far is the falling one

By
Rendered with a layered technique of tapping the paint onto the surface to produce roughly hewn, almost scabrous surfaces, these works lovingly transform creases in clothing into topographic landscapes, as in Untitled (undated): “I always compare the wrinkles in clothes to the ridges of mountains,” the artist said.
Kang Seok Ho, Untitled, Undated. Oil on canvas, 40 5/8 x 38 1/4 inches. Courtesy Kang Seok Ho Estate and Tina Kim Gallery.

July/August 2021ArtSeen

Julien Nguyen: Pictures of the Floating World

By
The sinister, tenebrific aura of Nguyen’s earlier works, like the macabre scene in Mary, Anne, Christ, and John (2018), is tempered in this recent show. It’s true that his works still resist easy projection, but therein lies Nguyen’s main aesthetic claim: like good theology, his works make the familiar strange again.
Julien Nguyen, The Temptation of Christ, 2020. Oil on panel, 40 x 30 inches. Courtesy Matthew Marks, New York.

March 2021ArtSeen

TR Ericsson: Pale Fires

By
TR Ericsson’s solo exhibition at TOTAH constructs a tender portrait of his mother who died by suicide in 2003 at the age of 57.
TR Ericsson, Sue 63 (Nicotine), 2020–21. Nicotine on gessoed panel, 24 x 18 inches. Courtesy TOTAH.

Close

Home