NYAB Event - Sang-ah Choi "Insatiable Appetite"

Sang-ah Choi "Insatiable Appetite"

Doosan Gallery

This event has ended.

This exhibition presents Choi’s latest mixed media paintings and installation, which epitomize her in-depth study and perspectives on life. She has developed her work over a decade using slick, resin-coated paintings and paper sculptures, which almost resemble manufactured products.

Time-Square (2010), one of Choi’s latest pieces in this exhibition, was inspired by 42nd Street in New York City constantly revolving day and night as if referring to our modern life, which is complicated and yet all intimately connected. Throughout her works, the traditional symbol of longevity—the sun, mountains, water, rocks, clouds, pine trees, the elixir plant, turtles, cranes, and deer—ubiquitously emerge and overlap in different stylistic forms so that the viewers might not recognize their presence at first. They are symbolized as the immortal circle of consumerism in our life, which is so deeply rooted in us that we normally do not comprehend it through the symbolism in her works.

Another omnipresent character, the romantic comic girl character with famously exaggerated big eyes, is drawn in blue, vomiting or shoveling her guts out. This girl seems to struggle with both anorexia and bulimia, which represents the very system of our society in a strange way. Only pure act and desire remain in the end, never fulfilled as the contents vanish into the very act of eating and the non-stop cycle of consuming life.

Even though Choi’s works seem overly muted with sweet colors and look so subtle and luminous, her critical view and somewhat repugnant statement about our current society seem serious and unfathomable. She carefully envelops the limitless circle of consumption in our society in two contradictory aspects—the heaviness of the theme and the incandescent, overly polished surface of her works. The boundary between consumer and that which is consumed has become blurred in her work. Although she lays them out with attractive visual forms as a reminder, the viewers might find out that these representations are not pretty after all.

Media

• Painting
• Installation

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