Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Chi’s recent solo exhibitions include 《Ritual en Honor a la Diosa Coca-Cola》 (Arturo Herrera Cultural Foundation Museum, Pachuca, Mexico, 2025), 《Ritual en Honor a la Diosa Coca-Cola》 (Chamber, Seoul, 2024), 《Landscape of Eight Views of Dadaepo and Their Characters》 (Hongti Art Center, Busan, 2024), 《Ibsangjin-ui》 (Good Space, Daegu, 2024), 《The Way of the 108 Gods》 (Sahng-up Gallery Euljiro, Seoul, 2023), and 《Shinjungdo 神衆道》 (Samgaksan Art Lab, Seoul, 2022).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Chi has also participated in numerous group exhibitions such as 《Miami Art Week》 (Gold Bust Motel, Miami, USA, 2024), 《Worlds Beyond Extraordinary》 (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, 2024), 《Neo-Meta-Trans-》 (ARKO Art Center, Seoul, 2024), 《The Bureau of Queer Art IV》 (Dama Gallery, California, USA, 2024), 《Traces of Time》 (Gallery A, Seoul, 2023), the international Cervantino Art Festival 《Cruzando el Pacífico》 (Guanajuato, Mexico, 2022), and 《Paisaje C》 (Museo de Arte de Pachuca, Pachuca, Mexico, 2022).

Awards (Selected)

He also received the 13th Arte Abierto Art Award from the Museum of the State Autonomous University of Mexico in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Tijuana Triennale in 2021.

Residencies (Selected)

In 2024, Minseok Chi was selected as a resident artist at Hongti Art Center in Busan

Originality & Identity

Minseok Chi has reinterpreted Korea’s traditional philosophy and religion—particularly Buddhism and shamanistic beliefs—from a contemporary perspective. As seen in Buddhas of Three Ages(2014) and Buddha(2015), the artist dissolves the boundary between sacred imagery and human anatomical forms, visually expressing the Buddhist worldview that “all beings share the same essence.” These early works explore the convergence of humanity and divinity, interior and exterior, biology and spirituality.

Later, through a series of works presented in the solo exhibition 《The Way of the 108 Gods》(Sahng-up Gallery, 2023), the artist conceptually expands the tension between mythological narrative and consumer culture by presenting objects and brands worshipped in capitalist society—such as Coca-Cola, Hermès, and YouTube—as modern-day deities. Chi’s perspective goes beyond mere critique, evolving into a comprehensive philosophical approach that integrates contemporary human desire, fantasy, and sensory experience.

As seen in Lucky Charms(2020–2023), the artist links symbols of capital with Eastern philosophy—particularly deconstructed phrases from Laozi’s Tao Te Ching—to produce new reflections. In doing so, he reconstructs today’s standards of value and reveals the mythological nature of commodity worship operating in the modern unconscious.

In his recent solo exhibition 《Ritual en honor a la Diosa Coca-Cola》(Chamber, 2024), Chi visualizes an entirely invented mythology centered around the “Coca-Cola Goddess.” Using symbolic elements such as the sun, charcoal, bottle, and herring, he unfolds a complex dialectic between power and resistance, the sacred and the everyday. This is not merely a satire on commodity fetishism, but a philosophical inquiry into how myth-making itself contributes to human perception and the recovery of subjectivity.

Style & Contents

Formally grounded in the tradition of Korean painting, Minseok Chi’s work consistently expands across boundaries of medium and form. In works such as Seokkayeoraedo(2019), object collage is used to create dimensionality within painting, inserting everyday objects into Buddhist iconography to produce visual friction. This approach characterizes the entire ‘Buddha’ series, presenting a formal contrast between visual play and reverence.

In the ‘The Way of the 108 Gods’ series (2020–2023), Chi adopts the format of a vertical scroll (170 x 60 cm), painted in acrylic on cloth, drawing on the structure of traditional Buddhist tanghwa. These scrolls depict anthropomorphized versions of global consumer brands such as Coca-Cola and Rolex, framed within religious imagery to reveal the devotional nature of contemporary commodity culture.

Recently, the artist has begun to organically combine visual works with text, music, and performance. The Way of the 108 Gods Dance(2023) and The Way of the 108 Gods Music(2023) draw on traditional ritual formats, spatially integrating the 108 portrait works, scriptures, and ceremonial acts to generate multisensory immersion. This exhibition marked Chi’s first attempt to transform the gallery into an intermediate space where everyday life and ritual, reality and myth intersect.

In the 2024 solo exhibition 《Landscape of Eight Views of Dadaepo and Their Characters》(Hongti Art Center, 2024), the artist introduced a new formal direction by connecting hieroglyphic character-like images—derived from the portraits of the 108 gods—with natural landscapes of Busan. Going beyond previous practices of painting and collage, Chi experiments with a hybrid visual language that integrates text, symbols, and topographical elements, exploring formal links between the natural and the artificial.

Topography & Continuity

Minseok Chi stands as a maverick figure in contemporary art, forging a new visual language that merges the symbols of modern capitalism with the religious worldviews of Korean tradition. His distinctive formal strategy—inserting objects into painterly scenes or incorporating religious formats to depict capitalist icons as devotional images—expands the expressive possibilities of Korean painting.

His practice evolved from early reinterpretations of Buddhist iconography to satirical commentaries on capitalism and reconfigurations of Eastern philosophy. In the solo exhibition 《Ritual en honor a la Diosa Coca-Cola》(Chamber, 2024), he developed an invented mythology with humor and formal rigor, establishing his own complex religious cosmology. This evolution signifies a shift from visual art as ‘play’ to a comprehensive expression encompassing philosophy, faith, and socio-critical commentary.

Chi continues to expand the reach of his practice through exhibitions and residencies at institutions both in Korea and abroad. Particularly in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, he engages in intercultural dialogue rooted in shared interest in myth and ritual, solidifying a global context for his work. His exhibition 《Ritual en honor a la Diosa Coca-Cola》(Arturo Herrera Cultural Foundation Museum, 2025) clearly demonstrates this international connection.

Looking ahead, Chi’s work is expected to evolve further through the integration of mythological narratives, image-text synthesis, and spatial transformation through performance. Grounded in the identity of a “modern shaman,” he will continue to create “spaces of play” that shift viewers’ perceptions. Drawing from the traditions of Korean painting and Eastern philosophy, Minseok Chi is establishing a flexible intersection between Korean sensibility and global universality.