CHAE HYESUN
- Introduction of Artist
- Chae Hyesun collects images drawn from everyday life and contemporary consumer culture, constructing narratives centered on the perspective of her companion dog, Loongki. Her works are populated with familiar visual elements—including popular characters, brand logos, packaging, souvenirs, and household objects—that are readily encountered in daily life. While employing an accessible visual language, the artist quietly examines contemporary patterns of living, consumer habits, and the repetitive behaviors that shape everyday experience.
For many years, Chae has focused on the repetitive nature of consumption embedded in ordinary life. Online shopping, waiting for deliveries, and purchasing beverages from cafés have become routine activities for many people. These everyday practices, however, are inseparable from broader environmental concerns such as the increasing accumulation of waste. Rather than addressing these issues through direct criticism, Chae adopts a playful and approachable visual language. By incorporating familiar imagery, she encourages viewers to reflect naturally upon their own lifestyles, a characteristic that has become central to her artistic practice.
This perspective continues in her recent series on travel. Travel is commonly understood as an opportunity to visit new places and enjoy a temporary escape from daily life. Chae, however, approaches the subject from a different angle. For her, travel represents the recurring desire to break away from the routines of everyday existence. Her interest lies less in the act of traveling itself than in the psychological impulse that precedes it—the longing to leave, the anticipation of unfamiliar places, and the imagination of destinations yet to be visited. The desire to escape the ordinary, the expectation of experiencing another way of life, and the dream of future journeys all become integral components of travel. To visualize these emotional states, Chae juxtaposes images of everyday life and travel within a single pictorial space.
Loongki has long played a significant role in Chae's practice as both muse and alter ego. Through walks shared with Loongki, the artist has continuously documented landscapes and objects encountered in daily life. In her recent works, however, Chae herself appears more frequently within the compositions, while Loongki occupies a less prominent position than in earlier series.
A recurring motif in the travel series is Starbucks' Been There collection of mugs. Travelers often purchase souvenirs as tangible reminders of the places they have visited. Such objects preserve memories of past journeys while simultaneously inspiring anticipation for destinations yet to be explored. Chae is particularly interested in this dual function of the mug. A single object is capable of evoking recollections of previous experiences while projecting future aspirations. Within her paintings, these mugs become visual devices that embody memory, desire, expectation, and the imagination of travel.
Vivid colors, simplified forms, and familiar imagery generate a lively visual rhythm throughout Chae's compositions. Rather than relying on elaborate narratives, she harnesses the immediacy of recognizable images to communicate the realities of contemporary life with clarity and accessibility. As Alain de Botton has observed, the role of the artist is to reveal new ways of seeing places that have become overlooked through familiarity. Chae shares this perspective, directing her attention toward ordinary scenes rather than extraordinary events, and uncovering new meanings within the objects of everyday life. Her travel series likewise does not focus on celebrated destinations or dramatic experiences. Instead, it invites viewers to reconsider the journeys they repeatedly imagine, anticipate, remember, and plan. Through the everyday objects embedded within her paintings, viewers are encouraged to reflect upon their own lives and to reconsider the reasons they travel.
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