Residency Diary 2016
CheolWon Chang collected the diary entries written during his three-month stay near Paris, France in 2016, and presented the archive at the exhibit. The entries are meticulous, extending beyond his thoughts on artistic practice and recorded details such as the things he had purchased at Carrefour, the people he had met, and the hours of sleep. While printing the diary, Chang translated his written materials into French (using Google Translate) so that his private life is not fully exposed to the public. The French diary was then translated once more into Korean. After the series of translations, Chang’s writing became incomprehensible. Thus, the diary at the show is legible yet impossible to read. The undecipherable diary loses its original function and is reborn to an object novel in its character.
Residency Diary 2018
Printed on transparent sheets, [Residency Diary] is the thorough and detailed documentation of Chang’s five-month stay at the residency. The archive records Chang’s collaboration with the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) from the very beginning and documents his attempts to find the standard of colors, as well as descriptions which could help understand the artworks created from the attempts. However, Chang obfuscated its legibility by printing the documentation on transparent sheets. Chang explained that he wanted it to be ‘seen’ rather than ‘read.’ He intended to present time as it is: the accumulation of transparent layers building on top of each other.