About Jay Chung

Jay Chung (b. 1986, Seoul, Korea) is a painter whose work traces the body in transformation — not as a fixed form, but as a presence that absorbs, dissolves, and reorganizes itself in relation to the world around it.

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He received his BFA in Fine Arts and BA in Psychology from Tufts University and School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts in 2016. Following graduation, he spent six years volunteering in refugee camps in Greece and Bangladesh, living alongside communities navigating conditions of displacement and survival. These years did not simply inform his work — they became its underlying pressure. What emerged was not a question of what the body looks like, but what it carries, and what remains after everything it has passed through.

 

His paintings move between figuration and dissolution, layering oil on canvas to register hesitation, endurance, and the gradual absorption of boundary as a physical condition. The body in his work is continuous with its environment — merging with landscape, light, and energy — reflecting his ongoing inquiry into the fragile states that sustain existence.

 

Chung has developed his practice through residencies and exhibitions internationally, including a recent residency in Berlin, where an encounter with the remains of the Berlin Wall sharpened a central concern in his work: that boundaries do not disappear — they diffuse, becoming the atmosphere we inhabit.