Sougwen Chung's Mytheme (Étude Op. 4) collection consists of four works and is part of an ongoing visual study investigating the expressiveness of the abstract form. The works examine the literary construct of a mytheme as audiovisual paintings inspired by the four main rubrics of games in Caillois' Man, Play and Games. The classifications of Agon (Competition), Alea (Chance), Mimicry (Mimesis), and Ilinx (Vertigo) are expressed as strokes of paint reconfigured in sculptural formations.

In each composition, vital painterly gestures compose the mytheme; a term that refers to the essential kernel of a myth, an irreducible, unchanging element, reassembled in various ways or linked in more complicated relationships. Chung’s works reinterpret this kernel as a visual composition. A score composed of textural soundscapes of improvisational violin and granular synthesis methods accompanies the works in this collection. Violin compositions were performed by Chung in collaboration with musician Praveen Sharma.

Created in 2012, Mytheme (Étude Op. 4) celebrates the immediacy of gesture as four audio­visual paintings that seem to sit outside of time. This body of work is the latest iteration of Chung's interdisciplinary artistic practice, exploring the mark made-by-hand coupled with the mark-made-by-machine as a metaphor for our ever-deepening relationship with technology. Sougwen Chung lives and works in New York.