Choi Sujin, Sea of Pink Dust, 2015, Oil on canvas, 130.3x193.3cm © Choi Sujin

Color has long been artist Choi Sujin’s matter of interest. She has forged the world of her paintings while sensing objects and things with color. Her own distinctive way of perceiving draws out the colors that touch her heart and also acts as the impetus for her painting world. A painting is an imaginary space in which the colors she has extracted from the world can breathe.

The places, situations, and scenes she has longed for in reality experience characters and situations in her paintings, bringing about a narrative. The world of her painting is a space where she is able to freely take a breath, breaking away from the pressure and anxiety she feels in life. To the artist, color is obviously the link between the world and her paintings. The painterly element of color assumes the role of a main character in her recent work.


From a sense of touch to color itself

All the same, one may ask “Is there any painter who doesn’t stress color?” Her recent work features the process of her introspection on colors, marking a turning point in her career. When I first visited her studio in June, I saw her depictions of a person kicking up sand on a beach, a brown sofa placed in the woods, and another sandy beach scene.

Pink Dust Sea(2015) features a figure kicking up sand on a beach, launching purple grains of sand over the entire scene. This work is quite impressive as the grains of sand depicted with paint seem likely to burst out of the image. When I visited her studio again in September two months later, the space had been completely occupied by little canvases featuring images painted in vivid hues and succinct idioms.

A brown sofa set in a forest and a sandy beach with misty clouds remained incomplete at the time. It seemed as though her breath had been poured into the colors that were specially adopted for these little canvases. The painted air made up of vivid, nimble colors filled the space of her studio as if replacing the air of a suffocating reality.

Her latest paintings do not rest on any concrete background such as the woods or the sea. What replaces these elements is a dark backdrop that was not often employed in her previous works. This background characteristically makes other colors stand out. In her previous paintings colors adopted and applied in freestyle brush touches are primarily those of fairly high saturation rendered in terse brush touches.

In these paintings she pursued a succinct representation of all pictorial subjects and elements such as composition, background, color sensation, brushwork, and layer while making painterly gestures intrinsic to the artist. As a result, color became a key factor in these works.


Color masses and color producers

On her canvas are mainly small color masses and simple images like a skein. Roughly painted colors look radiant because the background is dark. Colors ambrosially emitting light appear somewhat abstract since they take on most basic shapes like masses and woven texture. These colors appear in the form of color mass, color skein, or color cluster.

The clue to this aspect is found in her 2015 works such as Ripening Time, Dried Colors, Color Separating, and Blanket and the Horizon. These paintings are portrayals of classifying, drying, and ripening color paints. They are less conspicuous due to their relatively small size but can be thought of as transitional works showing a concern about how to make colors. These works show the time of painting to be troubled about how to paint.

In her recent works, Choi has exercised her imagination to the fullest, departing from a self-confessional focus. The narrative structure here is transformed from the eye of a painter (the first person) to the time of colors (the third person). Many makers in these works who look like the artist help produce materials on behalf of the artist.

They are, in a strict sense, imaginary producers who make materials necessary for painting and offer them to the artist. That is, they are those who make, transport, weave, classify, and keep colors for the artist, such as one who makes colors of air the artist wants to breathe (Color Cigarettes); one who takes out and carries colors the artist wants to use from piles of colors (Stacks of Colors); and one who generates the horizon required to depict the sea (A Person Who’s Weaving Horizons).

These persons who help the artist prepare painting materials lend vitality to her pictorial scenes.  Concise, vivid colors and brush touches disclose ongoing energy in the “course of production” or in the course of “creation.” The characters’ looks in the situation of this progress is worthy of notice. They are succinctly portrayed like cartoon characters, explicitly emitting productive energy.

Even awe is sensed in a red mass at the center of the scene and the image of one who holds it (The Reds). Some modesty and reverence in dealing with color is conveyed in those holding purple and pale green masses (A Purple Person and Green Person) and one who gazes at a pale green mass (A Yellowish-green Thing). The artist who is forging a world of her imagination investigates colors by virtue of imaginary makers.

 “I did my work in an established manner but I now feel like burrowing into the inner world. For any superficial production of my work I have envisaged those who gleaning and making materials.”

(Excerpts from an interview with the artist at her studio)

Interestingly, she has conducted audacious experiments with colors in her new paintings derived from an exploration of interstices between her works. Locus Solus is Latin meaning “solitary place.” It is also the title of a novel by French writer Raymond Roussel apropos of strange inventions. These strange inventions that are even able to resuscitate a dead person were created when his literary imagination exploded.

This novel comes up because of Choi’s ongoing experiments with color. To the artist who has been forging her own style of painting on canvas, producers of colors stimulate our common imagination. They also draw our attention to the creation of color, the process of its creation, and nature rather than work and gesture. In her recent works, color vitalized by such vivid gestures and excitement has been a key factor.


To the world of production

The supporting cast of her paintings are makers, producers, assistants, and carriers of color, the main character in her work. They are a comparatively large part of her scenes but don't have any specific painterly hallmarks. Choi underscores the existence of color by eschewing any concrete portrayal of figures and lending painterly texture to them. Such characters seem to support colors but are more in the background.

The artist does not define color with its concrete trait and concept. In her work, color is presented as the most elemental volume or unit whose identity is by no means elucidated as it appears either fictional or abstract.

When narratives on color are given to us, we tend to be more easily riveted by this than by its nature. Her way of representing color rests on the smallest unit like volume or mass without any mise-en-scène. Her concise attitude toward and underlying exploration of color simultaneously lend abstract freedom to perceive, relish, and imagine color in her scenes.

Her paintings bear the feeling she has when making colors on a palette as well as a primal elemental emotion she felt before making her own color. The Reds one carefully clasps with his or her hands may be not only a red paint mass but also a warm heart or a fireball. Colors seem to disclose their existence, escaping the domain of the canvas.

The time of the artist involved in the time of color demonstrates its introspection on the enriched existence of things around us, departing from a clamorous state. Characters in her paintings offer a glimpse at the artist who produces color, enjoying the making of colors. This may be common to all producers and makers in the world.

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