Tracing Picasso by Chae Tongyull

In “Tracing Picasso,” Chae Tongyull doesn’t copy the Spanish master—he traces him. Through photographs of 45 hand painted bowls, Chae transforms Picasso’s fractured forms and split faces into something entirely his own. In doing so, Chae anchors each piece in a circular and material composition, revisiting themes he’s long been drawn to: lovers in close embrace, eyes locked or joined in a single gaze. Painted with oil and acrylic on actual bowls, “Tracing Picasso” is a return to the visual vocabulary that helped shape him, now rewritten in his voice.