T-yong Chung: Sculpting the Void Between East and West

Korean-born sculptor T-yong Chung (Tae-gu, 1977), active in Italy since 2010, discusses his creative process in an interview. Trained at Brera and Carrara, he discovered postwar Italian art history and was drawn to classicism, which he merges with contemporary sensibilities. His technique involves using an industrial sander to abrade classical plaster busts, reducing them to delicate, almost disappearing forms. The gesture is intimate, revealing an inner void that he equates with the essence of the subject. He creates portraits of his mother, wife, and historical figures like John Keats and Testori. For the Cattelani Collection, he sanded discarded religious statues of Jesus and Mary, transforming them into contemporary icons. Chung emphasizes the duality of presence and absence, fullness and emptiness, and sees his work as a rejection of Western materialism. He describes the process as a search for essentiality, where the sculpture becomes a balance between what remains and what vanishes. The interview concludes with a Zen-like anecdote about a monk and an intellectual, underscoring his philosophical approach.