Now Showing in the Gallery: Wind Spirit Speaks!
My photography expresses my deep fascination with the role of art as a catalyst transforming what we see into moments of emotional or philosophical insight. These moments can be sublime or terrifying, affirming or unnerving–but they all occur when our hidden, subconscious emotions suddenly resurface into our waking awareness.
I explore this dynamic in my art by confronting the viewer with images that suggest elusive memories, dreams, and intuitions. I specialize in creating haunting, evocative compositions balanced between elusive beauty and the potential for violence. I achieve the tenuousness of this aesthetic space by juxtaposing opposing ideas—charm and danger, aggression and mystery, innocence and brokenness—in striking and visceral arrangements. In this space, anything can happen. The viewer’s conscious judgment and hidden, unacknowledged instincts must both assist in interpreting the paradoxical inputs. By providing a space of contact for active and unconscious ways of thinking, my works allow onlookers to catch a glimpse of their own internal topologies through the negotiation of their own sight and psyche.
The end goal of my art is the creation of exterior worlds that rekindle an understanding of the viewer’s unspoken interiors. I aim to devise pieces that guide viewers through uncomfortable emotional terrains to a more nuanced and fulfilled understanding of self. Through reciprocal processes of visual externalization and psychological internalization, I strive to inspire moments of realization in others, invisible dramas more alive than I can begin to imagine.
Nina Chung is an artist and fine art photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Ms. Chung’s highly suggestive imagery focuses on the emotional and psychological conflict arising from the interplay of challenging landscapes and their inhabitants. Her work emphasizes the origin and transference of atmospheric power between nature and the human psyche as perceived on an intuitive level. She specializes in capturing moments of animality in human subjects, and breathing emotional complexity into natural phenomena. Ms. Chung employs a range of techniques to enhance the dramatic quality of her work, including photo composite layers, chiaroscuro lighting techniques, and various cinematic effects. The diversity of her methods and clarity of her vision imbue her work with a richness of texture and tactile impact that spans a remarkable range of energy and emotion.
Ms. Chung was born in Seoul in 1969 and raised in the Brooklyn. She received her BFA at the School of Visual Arts in 1993 and began her artistic career experimenting with variety of mediums, including silkscreen, etching, collage, and silver pointe, before concentrating on photography. Her distinct style is the product of her rich background in classical painting, art history, kinesiology, and deep interest in Jungian psychology. Chung mentors young inner city children in Brooklyn during her free time. In “Skin and Stone”, Chung explores some of the least accessible reaches of the Icelandic terrain and their impact on the human psyche. Her most recent project, together with Nature Photographer Pat Schoenfelder, “Wind Spirit Speaks“, explores several artistic potentials of horses captured on film in their natural settings.