NYAB Event - Yun-Woo Choi “Endless, Seamless”

Yun-Woo Choi “Endless, Seamless”

Open Source Gallery

This event has ended.

Given the ubiquity of printed matter in daily life, it is no wonder that people often become more concerned with the representation of a thing than the thing itself. In pop culture, print and images in the pages of magazines and newspapers illustrate our world through depictions of cars, celebrities, and lifestyles. In religion, many believe that the Holy Bible, Koran, and Buddhist scripts exist as sacred objects. Yet, constructed out of symbolic language, all of these texts and images only function as a kind of map, a tangible object that points to an existence outside of our four-dimensional perception. According to philosopher William James, there are two ways of knowing things: immediately and intuitively or conceptually and representatively. By folding, tearing, and combining, Yun-Woo Choi obfuscates the meanings constructed in two-dimensional printed material in an attempt to deliver intuitive feelings to the viewer.

Philosopher Ken Wilber posits that thought and text represent a process of compressing three-dimensional reality into a two-dimensional illusion of the real world. Objectivity becomes an impossibility if one’s own thoughts always translate the world into subjective representation. In theoretical physics, scientists discuss theories involving eleven space-time dimensions that cannot be perceived, yet exist all around us. Within these dimensions, there would exist a multitude of ways to perceive and exist in the world. Choi takes these theories into consideration to speculate about the possibility for one to exist in multiple realities where invisible and untouchable subjective concepts such as emotions may manifest physically, supported by different laws of physics.

“Endless, Seamless” presents an intensely physical, yet fragmented and ethereal experience that allows for dualities to coalesce. Choi explores the relationship between the banal and profound, allowing seemingly opposite concepts to fragment and become intertwined as he constructs a subjective and ever-changing experience for the viewer. Encountering the philosophical and theoretical simultaneously within his elegant sculptures, one can begin to comprehend the numerous hidden and overlapping dimensions in reality.

Yun-Woo Choi is a Brooklyn-based artist who was born in Seoul, Korea. He received a BFA and MFA in sculpture from Hong-Ik University, and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Choi was a recipient of the Jung-Ang Fine Art Prize in 2007 and participated in the Anderson Ranch Art Center residency program in Aspen in 2010. He recently won the award of Year in Review in the Sculpture and Installation category from See Me in 2014. His works have been featured in the Chungju International Craft Biennial, Busan International Biennial, as well as several group shows in Seoul, Los Angeles, and New York.