Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Jiwon Choi’s solo exhibitions include 《Following the Curve》 (WESERHALLE, Berlin, DE, 2025), 《The Paused Moment》 (PARKSEOBO FOUNDATION, Seoul, 2024), 《Collecting Chamber》 (ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul, 2023), and 《Cold Flame》 (ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul, 2020).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Recent group exhibitions she participated in include 《Stemming from Umwelt》 (Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2024), 《Inter-frame》 (Backstage, Shanghai, 2024), 《Memories Beneath the Ego, Fantasy Above the Ego》 (Seoul National University Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023), 《Future Solos 2》 (WESERHALLE, Berlin, 2023), 《The Most Brilliant Moments For You》 (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, 2022), 《Veil of Thought》 (Ilwoo Space, Seoul, 2022), and more.

Awards (Selected)

Jiwon Choi was selected for the 2024 Kiaf HIGHLIGHTS Awards and the 2022 Public Art New Hero. 

Collections (Selected)

Her works are part of collections at the MMCA Art Bank, PARKSEOBO FOUNDATION, X Museum in China, and White Rabbit Gallery in Australia.

Originality & Identity

Jiwon Choi explores the threshold between life and death, the present and the past, memory and dream through her painting practice. Her works revolve around objects that have seemingly exhausted their life—antique dolls, insect remains, taxidermy-like crafts—yet still assert presence. These liminal beings function as psychological metaphors for the unease, lethargy, and void that characterize the contemporary condition. Early works such as Figures sitting on the fence(2019) and Where are we heading to(2020) depict emotionless porcelain dolls whose vacant gazes visualize internalized anxiety.

More recently, her interest has expanded to the spatial and architectural structures that surround these objects. In her solo exhibition 《Collecting Chamber》(2023, ThisWeekendRoom), she composed paintings where the boundaries between life and death blur within domestic interiors. Works such as Into the Chamber of the Time(2023) and Path to the Past(2024) employ architectural thresholds—doors, windows, and blinds—as metaphoric portals that allow the subject to drift between reality and surrealism, between lived time and imagined memory. These transitional chambers become sites where unformed emotions dwell and take shape.

Style & Contents

Choi blends oil and acrylic to produce glossy, polished surfaces, often juxtaposing them with rough or fragile textures. Her canvases are populated with worn and rigid objects rendered with careful luminosity. In works likeThe Crying Woman(2019), Untitled(2019), and the ‘Fog of Thorns’(2021) series, she juxtaposes the sleekness of porcelain dolls with sharp elements—thorns, flames, tears, or lenses—inviting a tactile response that extends beyond the purely visual. These contrasts evoke a sensory collision, destabilizing the viewer's perception.

Since 2022, Choi has begun incorporating spatial markers—curtains, glass panes, blinds—that articulate psychological pressure through architectural tension. In The Death of Wasps(2022) and Blue Moon(2023), the transparent layers and framing devices imply both closure and openness, as well as friction between disparate objects. These compositional strategies create a condensed temporal and emotional atmosphere, transforming the canvas into a chamber where sensations—visual, tactile, psychological—are simultaneously evoked and suspended.

Topography & Continuity

At the core of Jiwon Choi’s work is the porcelain doll—an object that serves as both a visual anchor and conceptual vehicle. Through this recurring motif, she channels contemporary emotional states: the fear of collapse beneath polished perfection, the unease of hollow vitality, the tension between stillness and fragility. Situated within the realm of surreal figuration, her paintings distill themes such as finitude, emotional residue, and the layering of memory into a coherent affective structure. The persistent return to “non-living yet animate” figures continues to resonate with broader existential tensions faced by contemporary viewers.

Choi has increasingly treated space itself as a narrative element. In recent exhibitions such as 《The Paused Moment》(2024, PARKSEOBO FOUNDATION), she foregrounds partition, perspective, and spatial collision to explore the ontology of presence. By incorporating architectural boundaries and psychological zones, her paintings interrogate how physical environments mirror inner states. As her practice expands toward global recognition, Choi's unique vocabulary—rooted in subtle contradiction and emotional quietude—positions her as a leading voice in navigating life’s impermanence through painting.