개인전 (요약)

최수련의 최근 주요 개인전으로는 《그림 회에 그림 화》(갤러리조선, 서울, 2023), 《무중필사》(산수문화, 서울, 2020), 《태평선전》(인천아트플랫폼 윈도우갤러리, 인천, 2020), 《망한 나라의 음악》(청주미술창작스튜디오, 청주, 2019) 등이 있다. 작가는 지난해 2인전 《구슬과 난초》(챔버, 서울, 2024)에 참여한 바 있다.

그룹전 (요약)

또한 최수련은 갤러리조선, 경기도미술관, 아르코미술관, 뮤지엄헤드, 디스위켄드룸, 서울시립미술관, 하이트 컬렉션, 인사미술공간, 아트스페이스 풀 등 다양한 기관에서 열린 다수의 단체전에 참여하기도 하였다.

수상 (선정)

참여한 레지던시 프로그램으로는 화이트블럭 천안창작촌(천안, 2022-24), 인천아트플랫폼(인천, 2020-2021), 팔복예술공장(전주, 2019), 청주미술창작스튜디오(청주, 2018) 등이 있다. 또한 2020년 종근당 예술지상을 수상했다.

작품소장 (선정)

작품은 현재 서울시립미술관, 서울대학교 미술관, 국립현대미술관 정부미술은행 등에 소장되어 있다.

Originality & Identity

Choe Sooryeon’s artistic practice begins with a critical exploration of the reproduction and consumption of traditional East Asian imagery. Drawing from classic Korean and Chinese films, she examines the clichés embedded in these cultural references—melancholy, femininity, dissonance with reality, internalized Orientalism, doubt, ignorance, and absurdity—through painting. Her early work, ,Eight Seonnyeos (Celestial Maidens)(2013), utilizes the visual language of traditional Eastern motifs while recontextualizing mythical female archetypes within contemporary South Korean society. She highlights how tradition is not merely a legacy of the past but an evolving cultural construct that undergoes distortion and reiteration in contemporary contexts.

The ‘Seonnyeo (Celestial Maiden)’(2017–) series, an extension of Eight Seonnyeos (Celestial Maidens), is among her most representative works. These paintings capture real women dressed in traditional attire at regional events, often appearing fatigued or indifferent, challenging the idealized and romanticized image of the East Asian celestial maiden.

In the ‘Carefree Woman’(2019–) series, she reconstructs the sorrowful female figures frequently depicted in 1980s and 1990s Chinese period films, further investigating the recurring stereotypes in East Asian narratives of women. Her interest is not confined to a particular era or location but extends to understanding how the Orientalist gaze is internalized and perpetuated within the culture itself.

Recently, she has expanded her practice by incorporating text and transcription, blending painting with literary narratives. In Sutra Copying for the Hangul Generation (The Principle of Ghosts)(2022), she collects dialogues spoken by ghosts in classic films and transcribes them into Hangul, highlighting the intersection of traditional language systems with contemporary sensibilities. In Jiang Jin’e’s Unfortunate Reincarnation and Zhao Xin’s Queue(2024), she borrows the format of Islamic manuscript illustrations, juxtaposing classical folktales with paintings in a non-hierarchical manner to reveal the absurdity of incomprehensible tragedy.

Style & Contents

Choe Sooryeon’s works are primarily developed through the medium of painting, yet they continuously evolve through the incorporation of narrative elements and material experimentation. In her early practice, she utilized a method of transforming low-resolution images captured from photographs or videos into paintings. Great Believer(2014) reenacts ritualistic scenes from Korea’s new religious movements, blending documentary realism with painterly ambiguity. Her paintings emphasize translucent brushstrokes and the raw texture of linen or hemp, prioritizing the deconstruction of illusionistic representation over concrete form.

Her approach uniquely merges traditional painting techniques with contemporary methodologies. While borrowing compositional structures from classical portraiture, she employs the transparency of oil paint to blur the boundaries of form. She meticulously prepares her surfaces by treating linen or jute(hemp) with animal glue, creating a foundation suited to her technique. By mixing a high proportion of medium into her oil paint, she enhances transparency, working swiftly in single, uninterrupted layers. In the final stage, she applies oil over the painting, partially erasing previous layers to produce a hazy, faded effect, a process that functions as a visual metaphor for the instability of historical narratives and memory.

In recent works incorporating transcription, she expands her exploration of painting beyond image reproduction, demonstrating its capacity to construct meaning on a linguistic level as well. Through these experimental approaches, she continues to push the boundaries of form, emphasizing the interplay between text and image in her evolving artistic practice.

Topography & Continuity

Choe’s work has developed around a painterly approach to folkloric "Oriental-style" cliché imagery and a critical recontextualization of the underlying structures of traditional narratives. Her works, from Eight Seonnyeos (Celestial Maidens) to Seonnyeo (Celestial Maiden) and Carefree Woman, highlight the disparity between the representations of women in traditional narratives and their realities in contemporary society while simultaneously expanding into material explorations within painting.

Her practice presents a unique perspective that intersects tradition and contemporaneity, painting and narrative, reality and illusion. Experimental attempts such as the parallel placement of text and image in works like Sutra Copying for the Hangul Generation (The Principle of Ghosts) and Jiang Jin’e’s Unfortunate Reincarnation and Zhao Xin’s Queue demonstrate her increasing shift toward multilayered narrative structures. Choe Sooryeon’s works serve as a significant example of how traditional subjects can be reinterpreted in contemporary Korean art, offering new possibilities for engaging with historical imagery today.