04 - 07 October, 2023
Saatchi Gallery, London
Gary Chung (KR)
www.instagram.com/garychung_plane
His process of taking photographs and creating artwork reflects how we live our lives. Gary photographs airplanes, but he is not a normal aviation photographer spotting airplanes around airports. He first determines a frame for landscape and places an airplane in his frame using geometry (so-called sine cosine tangent function). He uses GPS and a real-time fight tracker application to locate a spot where he should take photographs to capture the landscape or background image he planned and wait for the airplane to pass a certain location within the frame and takes photographs in a moment. The artistic scene he creates is beyond his calculation. There is an element of luck and serendipity in capturing the moment. The light, the direction of the wind, the flight height, and the path are unpredictable in subtle details. The moment the airplane passes a certain spot in his frame almost feels like an illusionary scene. His mastery of the camera perfected over time allows him to instinctively adjust the angle of the camera and capture the fleeting moment. His philosophy and attitude towards his photography are akin to how we approach our lives. In our lives, we try our best to achieve our goals and use all the calculations to pre-position ourselves, but at the end of the day, success comes from the harmony and alignment of efforts and luck. Only those who made efforts to be skillful in what he or she does can capture the moment. He uses all the available data and mathematical calculations to spot the best location to create the image he plans, but the photographs he takes are beyond his own calculation – it is a combination of planning, effort, and luck. His works remind us of a saying in Asia “盡人事待天命” (often translated as “Man proposes, God disposes.”) In his artworks, sky is the only limit, and we hope that to be the case in our own lives.
