JongRye Cha
JongRye Cha’s free-standing and wall-mounted wooden sculptures form lyrical patterns that express notions of creation, infinity, and eternity. Her method of working with wood is unique in that she layers hundreds of delicate pieces and sands them down by hand to create three-dimensional canvases with richly textured, impasto-like surfaces. Accentuated by the interplay of light and shadow across their surfaces, her sculptures stand out for their fluidity, appearing from a distance like rumpled bed sheets or rolling sand dunes. Other sculptures feature smooth knobs of various sizes that allude to fantastical lunar landscapes. Recently, she has also developed a penchant for covering surfaces with graceful cones with finely fluted sides. According to the artist, the cone “is the first form to break through the flat surface and, at the same time, the last form that arrives at the sky.”
JongRye completed her undergraduate work in sculpture at Ewha Women’s University and continued on to receive her MFA from the University, as well. She has had solo exhibitions at the Nampo Museum of Art in Goheung, at the Vermont Studio Center, and the Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul. Her group exhibitions include shows at The Berkshire Museum, The In and Out Museum in Seoul, The Naro Museum, and the Nampo Art Museum, among many others. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Plaza Hotel, Seoul, the Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul, Namp Art Museum, Gohung, and the JW Marriott Hotel, China, among others.