The Trophy Room LA is thrilled to present “Verdant Arcadia” a solo exhibition exhibition featuring paintings from Los Angeles-based artist Vivien Ebright Chung. The exhibition runs from June 22 to July 20, 2024, and there will be an opening reception on Saturday, June 22nd, from 5-9 pm. Please join the artists and gallery in celebration.

Verdant Arcadia⁠

⁠Twinkling candlelight shines in a window across an open meadow, laughter and music echo as trees whisper together, children sleep soundly in the grass watched by cherubs. This is a place where there is no hum of electricity, or illuminated screens, violence, or pollution, only community and harmonious collaboration with the aid and guidance of the spirit realm.⁠

In her first solo show, Verdant Arcadia, Vivien Ebright Chung wanted to introduce the vocabulary of her work in a richly layered way, with all the joy and silliness laid out with sweeping brush strokes and vibrant color. Drawing on her childhood spent in redwood forests, cow pastures, and piles of seaweed, nature is a character in and of itself in her paintings. One can ask a tree for advice, and should.⁠

The paintings are meant as an antidote to this period of time where many are bearing witness to needless suffering. These paintings are an offering, a hopeful manifestation for a better world, an ode and sonnet to life. It is not a return to a past, but rather a reimagining of a past that never⁠ was, all the good without the bad; things that speak to the higher self, such as friendship, familial love, sensuality, and the sharing of ancient knowledge.⁠

⁠These scenes take place in an imagined future where technology has been thrown over in preference for collectivism and radical community. What is there to stop humanity from living in a heaven on earth except for themselves? The paintings carry in them worlds of hedonistic⁠ pleasure, drawing upon familiar images of Rococo splendor but without violence, guilt, or social hierarchy. The colors and marks are put there like a siren's call, beckoning us to a universe of tranquility.⁠

Vivien Ebright Chung (b. Santa Cruz, CA), is an artist working in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, where she took interdisciplinary classes in both fashion and painting. Her understanding and interest in the body, clothed and unclothed, has hugely influenced the direction of her painting. Using lush, sensual mark-making and rich colors, Ebright Chung explores the ongoing conflict between the sensual nature of humanity and the intellectual and spiritual. Drawing on familiar tropes of art history and literature her work aims to document the raw joy and sorrow of being human. She uses life drawing as well as personal experience, motherhood, and friendships to draw upon as subjects for her works. Recent exhibitions include May Flowers, Trophy Room LA, Los Angeles (2024 group); My Favorite Things, Trophy Room LA, Los Angeles (2023 group); 500 Below, Smoke The Moon, Santa Fe (2023 group); Power, Transport Gallery, Los Angles (2023 group); Hoarders at Quarters, Quarters Gallery, Los Angles (2023 group).

To inquire about any of the artwork in this exhibition, please email info@thetrophyroomla.com