From the hallucination.
All an altar, where you lay
your head down, and bare.
And in despair, in stillness, hear
every desire rise
from body and id,
believing it the bidding
of the divine. Deriding nothing.
Void a voice in itself, and it’s
calling for blood, loud,
calling forth vision after
vision of the self, the savior.
Angel alter ego, shed your light:
Fearing they are living all
fearing for their lives.
— Park
D. D. D. D. is pleased to present Hallucination, a solo exhibition by John Hee Taek Chae. This will be Chae's second solo presentation with the gallery. Through a multifaceted approach to painting, the artist reckons with the deep fractures that the consciousness of the present has inflicted on our visions of the past and the future.
Two large canvases in 3B, A Lucid Narration and A Hollow Nation, dominate the space. In them, Chae physically stitched together imagery both found and original. While some of these images are overtly religious, their re-contextualization with images of classical Americana and monumental nature reveals the outsized role they play in the American imaginary. It also points to the larger Western tradition of painting and image-making. However, the titles of these two works hint at Chae's critical attitude towards his references—at once sincerely involved but deeply skeptical of their supposed meanings. This attitude acknowledges the true crisis of faith that can no longer be relieved by our usual overtures to irony and indifference. Despite this, through a strategy of juxtaposition, he nevertheless continues to look for meaning, however elusive they are.
Up the stairs in 4D, Chae presents a group of smaller works, where the complex multivalence of the larger 3B space gives way to a sudden quietude. While gently disconcerting, the images are self-contained, and together, they cohere into a state of rest. The clarity of their subject and their narrative destination posit a shelter from the harsh incoherence of our ceaseless visions. Yet, in this quiet haven, the connotation of this narrative reveals itself, and Chae's shelter takes on a less comfortable character.
