Gallery Baton presents Heeseung Chung’s (b. 1974) solo exhibition 《Wilder》, on view at its Hannam-dong space from September 30 to November 7, 2025.
 
For the past 17 years, Chung has explored approaches that transcend the essence and limits of photography as a medium, focusing on creating surfaces of images unbound by conventional notions. Comprising the new photographic series ‘Wilder’, ‘Faraway, so close’, and the single-channel video Landless, the exhibition presents new possibilities for thinking through photography, animated by the artist’s sensibility.
 
While preparing for the exhibition, Chung repeatedly returned to a line from Roland Barthes’ 『Camera Lucida』. “Ultimately, photography is not subversive when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.” This phrase aptly reflects the artist’s gaze toward landscapes and the living presences that inhabit them.
 
The exhibition is designed to allow viewers to lose their way amid encounters with the accidental and the contingent, discovering new possibilities in the process. Through this, Chung once again poses the question: “Can photography think?”
 

 
Consistent Themes and Contemporary Practice

Each of Chung’s exhibitions has been anchored by a clear thematic focus, pursued with rigor and precision. Her practice extends beyond the production of images, proposing instead a contemporary form of engagement: Thinking through photography.

At the 12th Gwangju Biennale, Remembrance has a rear and front, (2018)  explored the vibrations at the intersection of history and the present through large-scale prints and accentuated textures.

For the 2020 MMCA Korea Artist Prize,《Dancing together in a sinking ship》was realized as an installation combining photography, text, and music, addressing the relationship between art and the lives of contemporary artists struggling within reality.

Losing One’s Way — ‘Wilder’ Series

The archaic word ‘Wilder’, meaning “to lose one’s way,” gives the exhibition its title and the name of Chung’s new series. The works were conceived during long walks through forests in Jeju, where the artist immersed herself in different sites.
 
In the process, the hierarchy between the photographer and the forest as subject blurred; he experienced the paradox of being geographically isolated yet psychologically opened to infinite possibilities.
 
Each work is a single photograph over two meters high, split into two panels. Installed with a precise 1 cm gap between panels, evenly spaced throughout the gallery. This fine fracture emphasizes the disjunction between the symbolic and the real inherent to photography.
 
By losing oneself within the fissure—rather than the surface image—the viewer effectively enters the forest and inhabits what the artist calls a “place where silence condenses with density.”
 


Embracing Contingency — 'Faraway, so close' and Landless

The series ‘Faraway, so close’ embraces the complete contingency of nature—time, weather, environment.

Moving away from earlier studio-based works such as Rose is a rose is a rose (2016), Chung opened his lens to uncontrolled external elements, resonating with the unpredictability of the world. High-resolution photographs do not reveal their subjects exhaustively but instead question what it is we believe we are “seeing,” remaining images that continue to speak.

The video Landless (2025) quietly observes a boat adrift at sea, clouds, waves, and the myriad movements surrounding people. Positioned between photography and video, the work juxtaposes the contingency of moving images with the improvisation of music. Together they form a parallel that allows a fleeting glimpse of a freer dimension of the natural world, true to its etymology. Ultimately, Chung invites viewers to recognize the image not as a fixed referent but as an assemblage of ever-changing presences.

Chung Heeseung graduated from the Department of Painting at Hongik University and received both his BA and MA in Photography from the London College of Communication. He was the recipient of the 11th Daum Prize (2012), was shortlisted for the MMCA Korea Artist Prize (2020), and won the inaugural Ralph Gibson Award (2023).
 
Chung has established herself as a leading figure in contemporary Korean photography, presenting a wide range of works across institutions. Her exhibitions and projects include the Ilmin Museum of Art (2021), Art Sonje Center (2013), Leeum Museum of Art (2014), Seoul Museum of Art (2014), the 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018), and the Belfast Photo Festival (2019), among others.