Bong-Chae Son

A pioneer of the 3D painting genre, Son Bong Chae was born in Hwasun County, South Korea. He received his BFA from Chosun University in Gwangju, and his MFA from the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York, USA. Son employs a layered painting process to create ethereal landscapes reminiscent of traditional Korean landscape painting. Each work is composed of the artist’s signature trees, painted in oil paint onto multiple layers of polycarbonate, a special type of bulletproof glass 300 times stronger than acrylic glass. Illuminated by a luminescent diode, a type of lighting similar to a LED, these landscapes evoke both the memory of traditional painting and the timelessness of the scene.

In 1997, at the age of 30, Son became the youngest person to participate in the Gwangju Biennale. He has since participated in numerous solo exhibitions internationally and an extensive list of biennales, and his work appears in the collections including the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the Gwangiu Biennale Foundation Korea, and the Korean Cultural Centre in Shanghai, China.