Chun Kwang Young. Aggregation 07 A135, 2007; mixed media with Korean mulberry paper; 171 x 139 cm. Image courtesy of Michael Culme-Seymour and Art Plural gallery.

Up close, the careful triangle arrangement that is an accumulation of basic units of information yields an uncompromising, ravaged topography that rises and falls within the canvas. In some Aggregates, waves of tightly-packed, forward-leaning triangles pushes uncomfortably against an opposing tide of edges then dip under the onslaught of sunken projectiles and circular masses. In others, the surfaces resemble natural rock formations, showing no particular form. Put together, Chun’s surfaces are abstract, quasi-sculptural spaces in continuous flux or crisis, with the broad, expansive swaths of colour reminiscent of Helen Frankenthaler and the gradients of Jules Olitski—a composite style that is the result of his efforts at reconciling two seeming opposing worldviews: the conservative values of a Korean upbringing and the overwhelmingly secular and material world with which he came into contact when he relocated to Philadelphia to earn his graduate degree in the Fine Arts in the 1970s.

Chun Kwang Young. Aggregation 07 DE146, 2007 (detail); mixed media with Korean mulberry paper; 250 x 205 cm. Image courtesy of Michael Culme-Seymour and Art Plural gallery.

The mulberry paper is a site on which these opposing forces meet, a malleable, durable agent that was once commonplace in traditional Korean life. In the Korea of yesteryears, hanji was glued onto doorways as an insulating material; at the same time it was used for wrapping food to keep it from decay; as writing paper, it was used to print journals, registries and books. In the Aggregation series, hanji forms the basis of Chun’s individual units, a symbolic statement of the strength of Korean tradition, yet the accumulative result of these units put together is an undulating landscape of forms that seems to play out the Western aesthetic of abstract painting.

Chun Kwang Young. Aggregation 13 MA006 Blue, 2013; mixed media with Korean mulberry paper; 184 x 230 cm. Image courtesy of Michael Culme-Seymour and Art Plural gallery.

But Chun’s brand of conceptualism is not just a series of colliding shapes wrapped in paper that embodies the Korean experience; they are inherently textual and perhaps derive their greatest power from the deconstructive impulse that is presented in the way the Korean and Chinese characters bend and twist on each polystyrene triangle. Apart from the strong nostalgic element contained within the mulberry triangles, the hanji that Chun appropriates is taken from various literary sources, and while the black print provides an additional planning effect to cast the entire canvas in three-dimensional shading, they also call attention to the embedded but splintered narratives that defy any attempt at contextualisation.

Chun Kwang Young. Aggregation 11 OC077 Red, 2011; (detail); mixed media with Korean mulberry paper 113 x 163 cm. Image courtesy of Michael Culme-Seymour and Art Plural gallery.

Chun Kwang Young was born in 1944 in Hongchun, Korea. He received his BFA from Hong-Ik University, Seoul and his MFA from the Philadelphia College of Art. He currently lives and works in Korea.

Chun Kwang Young: Assemblage will be on view at Art Plural Gallery through July 27, 2013.

Dominus Aeris: Escape 3, Jiten Thukral & Sumir Tagra, 2012. Oil on canvas 96 x 72 inches. Image: Courtesy of Art Plural gallery.

Windows of Opportunity (2013), Jiten Thukral’s and Sumir Tagra’s (branded as Thukral & Tagra) latest show at Art Plural gallery, gives expression to the cacophonous spectacle of hybridity that defines contemporary India, a site that they deem to be a hotbed of conflicted histories and global transactions. These issues of societal flux are explored in their oeuvre through an eclectic visual language composed of cartoonish sketches, pop art and marketing media, serving also as a reminder of the days when Thukral & Tagra worked in the commercial realm of communication design at the beginning of their careers.

Weekend-bonanza-2, Jiten Thukral & Sumir Tagra, 2007. Oil and acrylic on canvas 72" x 144". Image courtesy of Nature Morte gallery.

The glyphs of their works are immediately recognisable: stock images of hot-air balloons and architectural postmodern buildings (Dominus Aerius, 2011), the consumerist’s supermarket trolley, popular culture’s action heroes (Science, Mystery & Magic, 2011). Stylistically combined, these images come together like a surreal dreamscape, blurring the line between kitsch and high art to become a product of strategic brand management created from a wide spectrum of media, weaving a narrative of dissimilar elements like a cheeky and humorous literary conceit. As deft as it is, one can’t help but think each work stumbles on its own cleverness when it is mostly reliant on a backdrop of an elaborate system of art-historical- and cultural-allusions that demands a measure of such literacy in their audience.

BoseDK, Jiten Thukral & Sumir Tagra, 2007, installation view.

Thukral & Tagra do however, demonstrate an awareness of their recursive complicity in this phenomenon[1], the result of which was the self-referential creation of ‘BoseDK’ products in an installation of a supermarket interior at Nature Morte in 2007. With a name that is a transliteration of a term of abuse in the Punjabi language, the fake label ‘BoseDK’ is an ironic statement on globalisation’s narrative of homogeneity as well as an admission of the commercial trappings of commodification and fickle tendencies of the art market.

Windows of Opportunity, Jiten Thukral & Sumir Tagra, 2013. Oil on canvas, 18 x 28 x 2.5 inches each. Image: Courtesy of Art Plural gallery.

In Windows of Opportunity (2013), a series of paintings and wall reliefs for which the exhibition is named, Thukral & Tagra shift their focus to the immigration aspirations of young Indians through the enduring images of pinball machines, sports memorabilia and the oval outline of an aeroplane window. Despite their efforts to leave the country, there is no anchoring destination for them, no identifying indicators of skylines or architectural landmarks, merely indicators of the mileage they accrue as a measure of their success. Their side-portraits are triple-framed: by the borders of the canvas, by the small, oval window of a plane, and finally by the confines of a pinball machine. It is a reinforced metaphor of the demarcating limits of their dreams as players who try their luck at a stunted game that consists of seemingly endless circular movements of transit and transience, the end of which could very well be the very beginning. Recurrent motifs of competitive athletics – medals, unreachable targets and more obviously the white-and-orange racetrack that weaves its way around the paintings – seem to reiterate the impossibility of success where the ultimate prize still lies beyond reach.

Perhaps what is most compelling about Thukral & Tagra’s oeuvre is the articulation of heterogeneity that does not point to an obvious signification. Part of the reward of engaging with their works is that these brightly coloured canvases invoke the automatic desire to unfold their idiosyncrasies into assemblages of meaning. But as in a guessing game however, we don’t always get it right.

Jiten Thukral was born in 1976 in the city of Jalandhar in the state of the Punjab, Sumir Tagra in 1979 in the capital city of New Delhi. They live and work in the New Dehli suburb of Gurgaon. Thukral & Tagra: Windows of Opportunity will run at Art Plural gallery till 25 May 2013.

Ian Davenport: Puddle Painting: Magenta, Violet, Red, Blue, 2011. Acrylic paint on stainless steel, mounted on aluminium panel, 97 5/8 x 97 5/8 in/ 248 x 248 cm. Image courtesy of Waddington Galleries.

Between The Lines by British artist Ian Davenport currently on view at the Art Plural Gallery, is an exploration of the materiality of paint and the balance between chance and control where colours are submitted to a rigorous pouring system of densely packed vertical strips on canvases and aluminium panels.

Davenport’s creative process thrives within the ambiguities of probability and chance: through the employment of a varied range of household instruments like watering cans, electric fans and syringes, paint is released at regular intervals over a stretched working surface, its dripping trajectory sometimes happening under deliberate tilts of the surfaces. At other times, the paint drip is steered by the forces of gravity to pool into saturated puddles at the bottom, occasionally bleeding into a neighbouring colour. The result is a visual and seemingly ordered assault of colours, a towering presence of vibrant shades that dwarf the viewer, drawing attention to a concentrated application process rather than a diversity of effects.

Ian Davenport, Puddle Painting: Titanium White, 2009. Acrylic paint on aluminium, mounted on aluminium panel, 28 3/4 x 28 3/4 in / 73 x 73 cm. Image: Courtesy of Waddington Galleries

On the simplest level, Davenport’s works emphasise the physical process of art production and in particular, the fluidity and potential of a liquid medium, where pouring, dripping, and waiting cast sombre light on both the potential and limitations of paint (many of his canvases are completed in a single sitting which could last up to ten hours). In this respect, the eschewing of narrative content and the resistance towards being governed by process are indicative of an intellectual stance that ostensibly invites stylistic comparisons to the works of Bridget Riley, Helen Frankenthaler and Callum Innes.

More precisely however, it is the role of courted, organised chance – the paradoxical phenomenon of controlled accident – that is an elevated and prevalent concept in Davenport’s oeuvre. Davenport’s precise, repetitive movements and calculated drips result in the apparent disappearance of the creative human hand until the base of a puddle painting is observed. Straight lines that are not entirely precise suddenly morph into a chaotic mess of wiggles, emblematic of a paradoxical process where the façade of accidental accomplishment masks careful deliberation of artistic intention that attempts to delimit chance outcomes.

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Ian Davenport was born in Sidcup in London in 1966. He studied art at the Northwich College of Art and Design in Cheshire before going to Goldsmiths College from where he graduated in 1988 and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1991. The show at the Art Plural Gallery will run until 7 July 2012.