Illuminations and Ruminations: Photographs and Other Works by Albert Chong
january 22-March 18, 2026
opening reception: january 22, 2026, 5-8 pm
Albert V. Chong, About Lucille, 2025, Courtesy of the artist
Why do we come back to certain memories? Many of us will answer that question differently. And yet, in some shape or form, we all engage in the process of revisiting people, places and things that signify something important to us. Some things remain a mystery while others are as sure as the sun. This relationship to our memories becomes a ritual, a process we repeat and reiterate throughout our lives. We celebrate our birthdays and mourn loved ones that are no longer with us. Sometimes we make connections to the past in order to make the present moment feel more grounded. In other instances, there is only a slight trace or an impression of someone or something that takes a hold of us. Yet this process, this repetition, is one of the many things that makes us human.
Illuminations and Ruminations is a retrospective of Chong’s work since he moved to Colorado from New York in 1991, all the way to the present day. While his body of work largely revolves around photographs, Chong does not strictly limit his artistic process to one medium. Several of the photographs in this exhibition feature copper mattes with inscriptions containing icons, patterns and text. He transforms the traditional still life painting with images from his Throne series as well as his Color Still Lives that are rooted in black and white photography, then adorned in color with flowers. There are photomosaics, images comprised of marble and stone tiles. And then there are sculptural elements that further animate Chong’s distinct style and sensibility.
Throughout the works included in Illuminations and Ruminations, Chong relies on recurring motifs as a way of preserving and remembering the spirit of ancestors, loved ones and strangers alike. In honor of his Jamaican and Chinese roots, Chong has consistently returned to images of family members like Miss Peggy and Aunt Winnie. Whether it is in an assemblage, a portrait or both, his combinations of material objects are visually vibrant and exude gravitas as they are repeatedly featured over several different artworks. This is also evident in his various self-portraits, which he calls I-Traits. A constant thread through his entire body of work is his dedication to communicating through visual forms what cannot be easily said or written. No matter the medium, he is balancing his own intuition with observations of the spiritual and material world around him.
Chong’s explorations are singular, and they create opportunities for us reflect on our own humanity. This exhibition contains elements of natural life and depictions of people that will be recognizable to us. At the same time, Chong combines these things with an end result that is not simple to define. This is the way we move through the world. We recognize what is familiar to us and pause in the face of things that do not immediately tell us their meaning. And we do it again and again.
This exhibition is generously supported by CU Denver’s College of Arts & Media.
Albert chong
Albert Chong is a contemporary artist working in the mediums of photography, installation and sculpture. His works have dealt directly with personal mysticism, spirituality, race and identity and numerous other topics as well as celebrating the beauty of images and objects. His main bodies of photographic work have been in the genres of still life in black and white and color.
Chong was born in Kingston, Jamaica, W. I. in 1958. He is the last of eight children of merchant Chinese and Afro Jamaica parents. Chong immigrated to the USA in 1977 at the age of 19 years. He lived in Brooklyn and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he received a BFA with Honors in 1981.
Chong became active in the New York art scene up until 1988 when he left to go to Graduate School at the University of California in San Diego. He received his MFA from UCSD in 1991 and in the same year accepted a faculty appointment at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Chong is presently professor or art at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Chong has also taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1982 – 88. Mira Costa College in Oceanside California from 1989-91 and Rhode Island School of Design in Providence from 1996 –97
Chong has received various prestigious awards for his work in the visual arts. These include a 1992 Individual artist Fellowship from the national Endowment for the Arts. In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of photography and in the same year the Pollock Krasner Grant. Chong has also been commissioned by Absolut Vodka to add his work to the ongoing series in the work titled Absolut Chong. Chong’s art in whatever form has been a constant presence in Museums and Galleries internationally for the last two decades. His work has contributed to the discourse around race, identity and spirituality in art and is in collections public, private and corporate and has been featured in publications, books and periodicals too numerous to mention. He has represented his home country Jamaica in many international biennials, national and international exhibitions, including the 2001 Venice Benniale, the 1998 Sao Paulo Biennale and the seventh Havana Biennial in Cuba in 2000.