‘Virtual Ink’ showcases the figural fluid studies of Sougwen 愫君 Chung, part of an ongoing research practice exploring and expanding the boundaries of art and technology. For more than a decade, Chinese-Canadian artist and researcher Sougwen Chung has been investigating the poetics of mark-making across myriad disciplines, including virtual reality, robotics and ai systems.
Chung began these ‘post-human subject studies’ in 2015, and the body of work presented in ‘Virtual Ink’ is the culmination of almost seven years of development. Building a bespoke process in custom software in Virtual Reality, the series is almost exclusively drawn in a simulated environment. The possibilities of drawing within the digital landscape extend traditional painting approaches with new spatial orientations. Every stroke of virtual ink is produced in three dimensions, rendering the work almost sculptural in its creation.
Across the exhibition space, frames captured from the ‘Virtual Ink’ digital environment are displayed around a set of special edition silk hangings, referencing the suspended gestures of the virtual marks.
Translating the digital into the tangible, Chung comments:
Sougwen Chung
“For me, it’s all physical. The virtual is just a different type of physicality, a designed tactility perhaps. To me each physical artwork is a memory of the virtual, a capture of the moment of the experience of the dimensional work.”
The ’Virtual Ink’ series is an homage to the ritual of traditional Chinese painting techniques re-imagined in the digital. From this foundation, the practice of mark-making becomes a wellspring of inspiration in developing artistic tools of tomorrow, in the creation of sculptural line-work that communicates the uncertainty, fluidity and temporality of form.
