Choi Gene Uk was born in Seoul and earned his BFA in Painting from Seoul National University in 1981, followed by an MFA in Painting from The George Washington University in 1984. Since returning to Korea, he has worked primarily in painting, after serving as a professor in the Department of Western Painting at Chugye University for the Arts. He has since retired and continues his work as an artist with a primary focus on painting.
The network of connections that once seemed capable of extending
endlessly in every direction has been helplessly ‘locked down.’ As parts of the
vast structures surrounding us became paralyzed, humanity retreated into
individual spaces, taking refuge in the unit of the ‘individual.’ This
contemporary crisis—or perhaps a warning—has generated anxiety and concern, yet
at the same time has begun to suggest the contours of another possible future.
If the world up to now was a dominant current shaped by grand narratives and an
orientation toward globalization, the present moment may mark the point at
which that great wave breaks, revealing worlds that had been pushed outside the
mainstream.
At this juncture, when major shifts are being foretold, the
exhibition 《Signs of
Bugahyeon-dong》 functions as
one sign illuminating that outer terrain. The title of the exhibition derives
from ‘Bukahyeon-dong,’ the location of Chugye University for the Arts, which
serves as a point of connection among the participating artists. By
foregrounding academic ties and locality, the exhibition attempts a modest
intervention into a present moment in which the belief that the ‘world has been
unified’ is gradually collapsing.
The exhibition is composed of two parts. Part I, on view from May 8 to
May 30, features works by Yumi Park, Hyerim Jun, Jeongju Choi, and Choi Gene
Uk. Yumi Park’s works are created in forms that can only be discovered by
carefully peering into small holes, metaphorically capturing moments in which
individuals come into contact with the world and register tactile awareness.
Jeon Hyerim interweaves the materials, meanings, methodologies, and surfaces
that constitute her practice, presenting situations in which meaning and image
become interconnected.
Choi Jeongju presents dozens of works from the process
of Drawing Study, produced under a set of limitations
imposed in pursuit of a ‘perfect’ image. Choi Gene Uk’s Monster,
Language, Sign of Disaster Community unfolds as three parallel
scenes: the painter’s self-portrait, the shadow of a gargantuan human-like
mouthwash bottle, and a scene beneath Dongjak Bridge where fishing nets are
being mended at a fish spawning ground.
Part II, running from June 4 to June 26, presents works by NAOMI, Min
Sunghong, and Eunah Hong. NAOMI intervenes imaginatively in the narratives and
images of specific places, constructing new stories with a horizontal sense of
temporality. Min Sunghong presents installation works that assemble a massive
carousel made from discarded objects and a constellation of ceramic bird feet,
produced through ‘making’ as a process of confronting a world without answers
and searching for one’s own mode of survival. Eunah Hong presents
White 0., a work in which images of Changdeokgung Palace,
North Korean beaches, and rural landscapes in North Korea are layered together.
These three overlapping images are transformed into an abstract ‘void’ in which
concrete contexts dissolve, transcending the boundaries of reality.
While the exhibition proposes the clear starting point of ‘locality’—the
ground upon which individuals stand—it does not posit a macro-level destination
toward which it must arrive, such as political discourse or historical
imperatives. Instead, it operates as a sign of the present by aspiring to an
independent world in which differing attitudes and experiments in art, along
with the questions and answers they generate, extend outward in multiple
directions before converging, colliding, and entangling with one another in a
single space.
