2022. 2. 23 – 3. 23
Choi Myung-Ae

Gallery Joeun is pleased to present a solo exhibition dedicated to Choi Myung-Ae (b. 1951) from February 23 to March 23, 2022. For the artist, who is fleeing the confines of space and time due to the current global health crisis, the forest is what gives her the most comfort, and she represents the theme of “comfort” with her own artistic language. The forest is a kind of spiral that makes human life possible, a source of life and a beautiful jewel.

From the forest, trees, mountains, flowers, air currents, creatures and rocks appear in an abstract way. Her abstract expressions, free of specific shapes and lines, contain a sensibility as compressed as a poem and as abstract as a piece of music. Without sketching, the colours and lines of Automatic Path are certainly a manifestation of the artist’s nature as a personal writing style and as an abstract expressionist. Colour is the expression of a psychological state and line is an excellent means of expressing the energy of vitality.

Cheong Jong-hyo, chief curator of Busan Art Museum, considers her art as neo-naturalistic work, as the artist continues to work with feeling and expression in and through her body. « her work begins with neo-naturalistic research. … According to one of the basic tenets of neo-naturalism, one’s bodily movement precedes one’s thoughts and emotions in reproducing and expressing objects. Thus, one’s individuality and self-centered subjective elements take center stage.

Her art springs from what she has experienced. Beyond the personal dimension, she wants to share the beauty and experiences she sees every day in her garden and on Gwanak mountain, which she often hikes. In her 1990 solo exhibition “Running Figures,” in which dynamic figures running through open spaces like dark fields created tension, her work seemed to reflect daily life amid the unstable social and political atmosphere of the time. In the past, she had reflected on the function of art: the conflict between ethics and aesthetics. But beyond the sociological, religious or political discourse in art, she is clearly attracted to aestheticism, as a famous phrase of a Russian writer says: beauty saves the world. For her, painting is a poetic expression of life. She draws and paints colours and lines every day in the belief that one day she will create a painting that will make another person’s heart beat and give them various aesthetic pleasures.

From the series “Light and Colour”, which contains the freshness and vitality of spring, to the drawings depicting flowers and plants with a single brushstroke, to the magnificent forest that covers the entire wall of the gallery, 25 recent works by the artist invite the viewer to immerse themselves in the forest that provides comfort and healing.

Gallery Joeun
3, Itaewon-ro 55 ga-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea
+82-2-790-5889