Korean artist Chung Eun-Mo’s painting installation ‘Parallel Windows’ was created as a site-specific response to the architecture and history of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1993. The work was conceived for the landing area of the Museum’s First Floor Gallery, which is painted a particular shade of deep blue for this installation of 12 abstract canvases.

These canvases explore, in two dimensions, the sculptural and penetrative power of light, mimicking in their unusual but geometric shapes the patterns cast by light coming through the windows onto the floor and adjacent walls. Chung Eun-Mo’s work is informed by a thorough knowledge of Modernism, especially of the work of the early abstractionists. Like Malevich and Albers, she is fascinated by both mathematical and chromatic harmonies and the changing effects of light on them. At the same time, the clarity and the mathematical precision of their geometry place these paintings ultimately in the classical tradition, perfectly reflecting the nature of the space they were designed to grace.