She was born on a pitch-dark night. That is why she was named after Selene, the goddess of the moon, so she would live like a flower that blooms brilliantly even at night when all are sound asleep. Yet, she wanted to be like the sun because she admired the glaring light that looked like a blaze of fire. Under the scorching heat that never seemed to wane, she always wanted to reach closer to the sun. Her hope soon turned into a question and pressed her: “Why do I, standing on this earth, yearn for the skies?”

She passionately danced away every day, longing to become one that shines brightly and clearly like the glaring mass, wishing to take after the generosity of the sun that extends its light to every living thing, nurturing them. When luck came her away time to time like a welcome rain, she did not let it pass in vain. On tough and tiring days, she stretched her hand once more to grasp what came in her hand, collecting them one by one, and she braced herself even when she was parched with thirst. Though the change was so slight and slow that it was barely noticeable, she practiced the movement of everyday, relentlessly keeping on with the performance called everyday life.

Nevertheless, there were things that she just could not do alone. She held on to the other, and as they relied and depended on each other, they slowly made their way up and lifted their heads. It was all for the sake of a single, beautiful fruit like the sun that she had been dreaming of all her life.

‘No, not yet. I can ripen a bit more. I have not been just simply waiting for the highlight of my life that I have been dreaming of all life long—I fiercely fought for it every day, trying to guard it and save it.’ In fact, she knew already. She knew that she cannot choose the time when she will step close to the self she had been imagining and yearning to be, that she may have to go on stage right then and now, when it’s a shame because it is so close. Until she set her foot on Korea, a land so far away across the waters, she had to prove that she is a harmless foreigner through all kinds of documents and processes. She was a foreigner. In fact, she had to be one. Her role became clear only when it was evident that she came from afar, so the focus of her look and identity had to be on exoticness.

Light glowing like the setting sun was cast on palm leaves that seemed to have come from some tropical country, and she did what she had to do. The days of growing and blossoming are now the past and she now goes by the name with a sweet nuance. She will drench herself in romance that feels like sticky and syrupy sugar water and fall into eternal sleep like the lover of the goddess whom she was named after, neither dying nor growing old.

November 2023 Kayoung Choi

These exotic beings from overseas can be seen in the corners of every indoor space, regardless of the style in which these places are decorated. Though they lack the elegance of Oriental orchids, these tropical plants, such as alocasia and monstera, have brisk and extravagant appeal. When they are moved from their natural environment into plant pots, their surroundings also change. We are now able to enjoy scenery that apparently belongs to Indonesia or Bangkok in unexpected places like the corner of a traditional marketplace in Korea. Who cares if they are real? Being able to enjoy their beauty at a convenient moment should be a sufficient benefit itself. A Hawaiian-style café doesn’t have to be an actual replica of the Island of Hawaii as just creating a bit of a “tropical” feeling would be enough. The same applies to the scenes Kayoung Choi has created with tropical plants like the pitaya and the palm tree in a basement art gallery in Sogyeok-dong, Seoul, in a space devoid of any soil or even a blade of grass. Through CHOI’s paintings, I feel the tropical taste she has created—this must be the exotic taste everyone knows well, one both sweet and refreshing.

On one wall of the gallery, I can see a famous overseas resort island, while on the other I recognize palm trees lining a beach at sunset, instead of the ginkgo trees populating the streets near the exhibition venue. I also imagine I am surrounded by tropical nature shining freshly under the sun, instead of the rectangular lighting attached to the ceiling. Upon seeing the nice ripe red pitaya expose its flesh and seductive sweetness, I desire the freshness of it. However, one thing particularly catches my eye amidst the coherently fresh and passionate familiar tastes: one pitaya fruit born alone in the wood(For the Sake of a Single Fruit(2024)). Looking particularly red and fresh, just as its surroundings look ashen and dry, the fruit resembles the kanran orchid that bloom in cold winter, rather than something tropical. Unlike the pitaya in the Magenta, Sunset - Foreword for Furutsu Yeonji Lee previous picture that was busy showing off its sweet, tasty flesh, this fruit looks like it was borne out of enduring hardship. And now, it is time to summon stark reality onto this tropical-taste romance.

On the forest dried up for the sake of bearing a single fruit, I overlay an areca palm shaking its color-faded branches in the hot artificial wind. Then, plagued by the light of an RGB sunset mood lamp that mimics the atmosphere of dusk, the palm trees in Dragon Fruit Punch turn into a burnt black silhouette deprived of green. The magenta light from the sunset mood lamp shining on the palm trees also illuminates the high-saturation palm fruits of(Endymion(2023)). ” After catching a glimpse of other red fruits, my gaze zooms in on a piece of glacé cherry (Endymion(2023)) that appears particularly large and prominent among several fruit slices soaked in sugar syrup, and the following sentence comes to mind: “That color is exactly like the palm fruit. ” Looking at the palm fruits in the picture, it even feels as if the taste of glacé cherries, which leaves only the sweet flavor of syrup rather than the freshness of the pulp the more you chew, lingers in my mouth. The flesh of the peeled pitaya is devoid of any drop of juice; only the sugar syrup that has soaked the canned pulp is visible when I look for a juici- ness-like moisture.

Between the palm fruit and the canned cherries, as my eyes wander in search of fresh flavors, they reach a dark blue scene (Eternal Sleep (2023)), where the romance and sweetness of the palm recede further back.

The story returns to the dried forest, and the pitaya in that forest, which suggests that the tropical plants in front of me have undergone struggles for survival that are neither romantic nor sweet, contrary to what we often imagine. Despite their differing appearance, and even despite that some of them even originate from the desert, these tropical plants have so far been the main ingredients for the same tropical taste romance. Just as pineapples and papayas, despite their different tastes and appearances, produce the same syrup flavor in a can. In the tropical romance presented by CHOI, the tropical plants were merely slices of fruit in a cocktail can1. The gaze of the artist has been constantly directed not towards the pineapple-scented paradise of Blue Hawaii 2 but towards the inside of the unrooted pots, the makeshift home of the palm trees. These pots enable the palms to go anywhere, but where they will end up would not be where they would choose. Doubtless ultimately they will be withering under artificial wind and mood lighting indoors. Could such a place really be considered a better home than the tropical rainforest? The chroma of the fruits, achieved through repeated strokes at the tip of her brush and driven by such a perspective, has gradually come to echo the taste of syrup-soaked cherries. In this regard, the indoor palm trees, too, can only be seen as suffering from light pollution, fatigued by pretending to be the scenic elements of a tropical island.

However, to say that CHOI painted them solely out of pity for their condition would not be accurate, as her tropical plants do not evidence a single leaf that is wilted or decayed. Moreover, they reveal only their most tropical moments in high chroma and flamboyant beauty, reminiscent of a dancer giving a passionate performance on stage. Perhaps the narrator of this sweet story created by the artist is not a third person but has been a first person from the beginning. It’s time to reflect on what we might have overlooked. I return towards the dark blue screen (Eternal Sleep (2023)). Imagine that these fruits have been making eye contact with us all along. In this case, how could the story of this place, which couldn’t bring forth any paradise on earth, begin again? The first scene would start from the perspective of the alocasia, slowly to the climate of tropical rainforests. They have not been necessary since the plant was moved into pots placed indoors. However, when a leaf without holes grows, nutrient supple- ments are used, for the monstera is loved for its perforated leaves. work Blue Hawaii is named after this beverage.

It captures Hawaii with the sour and sweet taste of tropical fruits and the blue hue of Blue Curaçao and is often garnished with a red maraschino cherry, a slice of pineapple, or a miniature paper umbrella.
scanning the interior of a café. The palm fruits had to believe their sweet survival strategy3 had failed because of their processed flavor. Now, they resort to a survival tactic easier than evolution, mimicking the tropical taste as they are now without the need for further evolution. It’s not difficult at all; they just need to be immersed in sugar syrup and dyed in RGB lighting. They can even use the fake tastes that mimic them, even if that means they have to exist within a borrowed romance. Although they are now labelled as unrecognizable fragments of fruit pulp, as long as they do not forget that they remain themselves. CHOI has shown a profound interest in facets of reality that dream of unreality, such as romance or fantasy. That means her goal is not overturning the world of fantasy presented on the stage. If we try to analyze a constructed world of unreality solely through a practical lens, the unreality would become an unbelievable mirage.

Then we might end up urging ourselves that we should remove the veil blocking the view to face reality directly.

The artist, however, does not question why our reality needs such fantasies. She delves into how fantasies reveal themselves within the space and time of reality. Had she moved towards asking the reason, she might have only received the stale answer that all unrealities stem from desire, echoing back to her. For CHOI, inquiring about the events that occur between reality and unreality is like trying to understand a world she has never experienced. I just used the word “world, ” but to put it more accurately, it could be said that she is interested in the various aspects of life within reality. The artist observes from her surroundings how life in reality dreams and longs for unreality, and the way she approaches unreality has always been accompanied by a viewpoint being consumed by other species, became obsolete a long time ago with the use of sugar syrup and artificial flavors in cans. This also brings to mind various tropical fruits suffering promotional activities on social and short-form media by multinational fruit dealers (#fruit_tik- tok) and the Shine Muscat grapes ensnared in a sugary coating. that seeks to see things as they are rather than try to understand them perfectly. To CHOI, therefore, fantasy is not something hollow but another fragment derived from, and part of, reality. In this context, it is natural that she found familiar themes, which she had encountered in her real life many times, in the context of tropical plants being con- sumed as exotic objects and then took an interest in how they survive. Romance, utopia, dreams, etc. It could be said that CHOI’s previous work reflected her approach of imagining the stage of the illusion made of these unreal fragments sprouting from reality, as if sitting in the audience, to incorporate her own experiences. In distinction, with Furutsu, the artist now climbs onto that stage to mimic a certain mode of being and look outwards. The palm trees and tropical fruits that evoke the dream of a tropical romance, the fruits in cans dipped in an eternally sweet sleep that never leads to decay. I imagine the moments when the borrowed voices of these beings are channeled through the artist and flow over the anonymous audience standing in front of the paintings.

1 For example, the holes in the leaves of the monstera result from an evolutionary adaptation

2 This cocktail is made from pineapple juice, rum, Blue Curaçao, and other ingredients. CHOI’s

3 The sweet survival strategy of tropical fruits, which aims to disperse their seeds further by

What’s in sight is there because it is. This tautological way of seeing things provides an immediate, obvious answer. Once you see a photo; the photo is there. A chatroom where a photograph of a moun- tain has been shared as a digital file shows an image of the mountain that is not fake. You can say “It’s a beautiful mountain, ” in observing it. However, a more profound question lurks behind that of the visible object and even the action of responding to the question of what it is: This is the question of where it comes from, or more precisely, how it ended up here. The mountain Kayoung Choi encountered in a photograph (image file) from a friend of hers was a tourist destination and quarry1 . The mountain could be seen because it was there, but it turned out — something she didn’t know when she saw it — that it had already been marred by human eyes. Therefore, it was not that the mountain was there as it was without reason. However, treating the mountain as a source of construction material or as a scenic vista are equally the result of finding some form of usefulness from a human perspective. Choi’s solo exhibition held in 2020 should be understood within this context.

In her exhibition at Artspace Hyeong, titled A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac, Choi did more than simply depict the mountain. Here, on the canvases, in the gallery, certainly is the mountain. However Choi delved one step deeper, and paid attention to how the mountain came to be here. By doing so, she highlighted how nature is processed through the gaze of humans directed towards the mountain. Her work points to our natural inclination to seek material utility by exploiting it as a quarry or to relish and consume it as a visually appealing image A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac (2020).

Fruits, Preserved Through Processing and Fiction Konno Yuki sentence: “Bathed in romance akin to sticky sugar water, he will neither die nor age, eternally asleep like the lover of the goddess after whom he was named. ” Unlike the mountain-quarry, processing acts like embalming, in preserving the form and image of an object rather than repurposing it, such as using it for construction materials. By telling a story from the pitaya’s viewpoint, the artist in this exhibition focuses closely on the existence of the fruit, moving away from a one-sided human perception of tropical fruits relative to their form and distinct fluorescent color.

Why did make the artist’s perspective toward processing as an inter- mediate between natural objects and humanity change? This shift can be discerned by examining Choi's approach in her 2022 solo exhibition Survival in Fantasy at the Kumho Museum of Art. In this exhibition, the artist explored the now-defunct theme park Bugok Hawaii and its associated memories. The distant images in these memories come to life within her paintings, and on the stage created by the paintings. Even though the structures have lost their form and the site is now difficult to access due to the constraints of space-time, the hazy images lingering in people’s memories remain vivid. If the artificial Hawaii could persist in memory even after it is literally out of people’s reach, it is because of those who built, maintained, and visited this place. That is to say, memories are artifacts or products of artificial processing. Furutsu reflects the same perspective as tropical fruits: though their flashy colors may be artificially enhanced, this is not merely a result of one-sided or negative human manipulation (by the public and the artist alike). The exhibition transcends the act of mere lamentation over the fruit's lifecycle—its growth, departure, and eventual incorporation into a beverage—unfolded along the viewing path. In this regard, it's not solely about the sorrow felt by the observer but also captures the sentiments of the departing fruit. As her text stated: “‘Not yet, I can still ripen more’ ... Indeed, he was aware... His significance remained obscured until it was clearly acknowledged that he originated from of a tourist destination.2 To see means finding utility and beauty in things in order to pull them toward us. The marble at the quarry parallels the canvas the artist confronts for the first time. Both stone and canvas are bound to be altered and relocated by human hands. The milky marble is destined to be used as something else. Some claim its fate, but who preordains this fate? We humans do. Choi portrays the white side on split white canvases, exposing the artificiality imposed on the landscape by quarrying or the observers’ gaze, through the additional artifice of painting.

Some time elapsed after the artist viewed the image of the mountain- quarry, before nearby residents demanded its closure by filing a criminal charge in 2022 for the damage of nature and their living environment.3 Following this, Choi’s works from her 2020 exhibition were showcased again in Serbia in 2023.4 Towards the end of that year, she held another solo exhibition titled Furutsu at Gallery Chosun, followed by the Furutsu Jelly show at Osisun. These exhibitions, centered on imported tropical fruits, occurred amidst discussions about national borders, which, by definition, surround things. In the show, the artist’s perspective on natural objects appears more romanticized when compared to that offered within A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac. While the latter emphasizes artificiality, the former seems to joyfully embrace the status of having been processed. This shift can be attributed to the narrative found in the artist’s notes, which feature a pitaya fruit as the protagonist. Here is the text’s concluding are reimagined to resemble a series of fireworks or neon sign displays. The show’s Korean title, “쉽게 찾은 풍경” (literally, Easily Found Landscapes), exposes nature being 'easily found' for ornamental and recreational purposes and human behavior that swiftly engages with (i.e., easily finds [visits]) such natural settings https://prviprvinaskali.com/clanci/dren/ekologija/u-podnozju-vencaca-blokade-zbog-kame- noloma.html 2023.10.6. - 10.17. Galerija čedomir krstić (피로트, 세르비아).

the artist celebrates objects, including those from nature, as vessels for forming memories, desires, and hopes—which are the focal points of her view. The tropical fruits inside the cocktail glass have now vanished from our sight. Their taste is bland and unsurprising. But, are our impressions solely of softness? If there’s any aftertaste of tingling sourness it may be the desire contained in the fruit once alienated or the tepid breeze at a tourist locale, the exact details of which, such as where or when, we can no longer remember.

afar, which distilled his appearance and identity into something exotic.”5 As shown by Survival in Fantasy, a greenhouse is not solely a refuge of coziness and comfort. Nor is it a place deserving only criticism for its artificiality. It is a space of memory that contains and preserves time, space, desire, and the loss of such. It is undeniable that the greenhouse is not a natural tropical environment, but in Furutsu, the tropical fruits that are processed and imported serve as a greenhouse that contains the memories of the fruits. In a place where they were welcomed as strangers, they may fail to taste like they originally do because of the sugar syrup they’re immersed in, or they are maybe destined to be easily disposed of and replaced like the ornamental plants we see everywhere. Whatever their destiny, it is preordained by us humans, but that should not mean these fruits are a mere trifle. The sweetness of diced fruit pieces subsiding in a cocktail glass represents a sanitized concoction that harbors memories, aspirations, and even the greed of humans and corporations. In Furutsu Jelly, we navigate through pieces processed on the stage known as the gallery in a dual sense as these are both sculptures finished with no sharp edges and fragments enhanced with sweeteners like canned fruits. By touching these slices of pineapple, watermelon, and mango, we’re reminded of their tactile softness and sweet taste. In our experience of walking among desserts, we all collapse inwards together.

What happens to us at the end of this collapse? Two options emerge: exiting the gallery or delving into memory. Echoing the fruits' dreams, we long for the tropics, immersing ourselves in the region’s imaginative and fictional essence. One way to defy and go against the constraints of physics is to build a boundary for ourselves within which we can subside inwards and stay. It can be said that Choi has been exploring the concept of fiction and processing across the many years of her practice of works and exhibitions. Standing between artificial inter- vention and fictional establishing, rather than condemning artificiality,

1 Kayoung Choi tells how these things developed in her book

2 In her 2017 solo exhibition Found, presented at Gallery DOS, the landscapes within her pieces

3 For discussions related to the quarry in the Venčac region, refer to the following link:

4 Померање планина (Relocation of a Mountain), 2023.9.21. - 10.3., Galerija Art55 (Nish, Serbia),

5 Excerpted from Choi’s statements for her solo exhibition Furutsu

I call for each star Pae, Kyeong, Ok, such foreign girls’ names, ...... names of poets like ‘Francis JAMMES,’ Rainer Maria RILKE’

In YUN Dongju’s “A Night of Counting Stars,” he categorizes the names of exotic girls and poets as Pae (佩), Kyeong (鏡), Ok (玉), and includes figures like Francis JAMMES and Rainer Maria RILKE. However, during my childhood, all these names carried a sense of the exotic. The emotional gap conveyed by the term “exotic” surpassed that associated with a foreign country. Exotic taste is composed not only of physical distance but also of the yearning arising from unfamiliarity. In reality, the actual physical distance is inconsequential. What holds more significance is the kind of identity or crystallization that these blended tastes possess.

From Hawaii to Serbia to Furutsu

CHOI Kayoung’s journey spans from Serbia to Hawaii and eventually Furutsu. However, for the purpose of this essay, I will trace the narrative in reverse chronological order—from Hawaii to Serbia and, finally, to Furutsu. This sequence mirrors the order I was introduced to CHOI.

From Hawaii

The Yongin Natural Farm, established in Gyeonggi Province in 1976, underwent a transformation in 1996, rebranding itself as Everland. The theme park, situated on the same grounds, underwent a reorganization aimed at “Creating the infinite value of time and space to improve the quality of life.” While Everland ascended as a haven of dreams and aspirations, Bugok Hawaii in Changnyeong-gun, Gyeongnam, inaugurated in 1979 as a belated counterpart to the natural farm, experienced a decline post-1990s, culminating in its closure in 2017. This sets the backdrop for the discussion of CHOI’s exhibition Survival in Fantasy. Survival in Fantasy was CHOI’s solo exhibition at the The Kumho Museum of Art in 2022, a showcase that left a profound impact on me when I happened upon it by chance. As a child hailing from Bugok Hawaii, delving into the 99 chapters of Ninety-nine Pieces of Bugok Hawaii - From J in 1984 (2022) transported me back to the enchanting days of watching dancers perform on a stage filled with exotic allure. These memories, ignited by a postcard of J (Jacky) discovered by CHOI on eBay, unveiled the vividly colorful and glamorous stage adorned with various tropical plants, people adorned in vibrant swimsuits beside swirling lukewarm water, and an exceptionally long water slide, evoking a profound sense of nostalgia. The work took the form of a lenticular arrangement, presenting shimmering images at intervals against a white background that served as a gap in the memory, echoing those days when reality seamlessly intertwined with the imagined. While CHOI’s paintings evoked concrete experiences, for her, the imaginary realms were constructed through J’s postcards and low-quality home videos of Bugok Hawaii. She expressed, “I felt that the gap in my imagination would never be filled, even though the thickness of the imagination seemed to be building up like this...” The exotic allure sparked by J was once again brought to the forefront, yet instead of people from that era, including J whom she had never met, tropical plants assumed their place. Despite the slight time lag that separated CHOI from Bugok Hawaii, an interview with the remnants of Bugok Hawaii was structured to bridge the gaps in her memory embedded behind the paintings.

Through Serbia

There is also something to be said for CHOI’s solo exhibition A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac at Art Space Hyung in 2020. Serbia is more like a foreign country than France, Germany, or England. I was speechless when I saw CHOI’s A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac, which depicts the Benzas quarry in Serbia. If Bugok Hawaii draws a line in the sand between me and CHOI, Serbia draws a line in the sand between me and anyone else who has ever been there. I wouldn’t call it a unique experience, but there was a time when I was invited to a wedding in a small town in southern Serbia and danced a dance that looked like something out of an Emir KUSTURICA movie. CHOI, who is the subject of A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac, had never been there. Rather, this exhibition led to an exhibition in Serbia in the fall of 2023. The idea for the exhibition was to receive local photographs from Serbian artist M (Maria) and paint them with the idea of walking and exploring the mountains in the photographs. However, she was shocked when she later realized that the landscape in the photo was a quarry. “I felt like the mountain was crumbling,” CHOI said. Perhaps this realization led to different preparations for the postwar exhibition. Regardless of whether it was a mountain or a quarry, the conditions for viewing and composing the transmitted image on a monitor were the same. While they may have had tremendous texture and color in the field, the pixelated landscapes appeared as paintings with “flattened surfaces” that made the foreground and background of the space appear closer together than they actually were. For this expression, she decided to try acrylic on canvas instead of hanji. Of course, the change has its own meaning, but CHOI seems to have focused on the desired expression rather than the change. For her, the tools of painting, such as support, pigment, and brushes, do not accompany her to rethink efficiency. The basic concepts of Oriental painting are still important to her. Therefore, in her paintings, strokes are definitely more prominent than surfaces. The sense of movement and speed through handwriting is a constant challenge for her, even with acrylics on canvas, and she makes flexible choices when necessary to find the right expression for the landscape she has not experienced. The surface of the paintings boldly reveals the omissions, fragmentation, juxtapositions, and combinations she chose to make in the process of taking in the discontinuous landscape, as the fictional landscape was altered in a way that could reveal its fictional nature. After the exhibition in Serbia, I received from her a few archival photographs of the place she had approached for the first time physically and for the second time conceptually. It will be interesting to see what these unfinished fragments of a foreign country will provide for CHOI in the future.

To Furutsu

CHOI Kayoung’s solo exhibition in the fall of 2023, titled Furutsu (Gallery Chosun, Seoul, 2023), conjures images of canned fruit cocktail, a symbol of 80s hospital visits. Aside from the pineapple and cherry in the honeydew, I didn’t even know the names of the individual fruits. When I looked it up, I found out that it contains papaya, coconut jelly, etc. Unlike the trend of seeking seasonal and organic fruits today, tropical fruits are the best for savoring exotic tastes. CHOI’s chronicle of Hawaii, Serbian quarries, and furutsu is a perfect example of embodying exoticism. However, rather than basking in the euphoria of exoticism, she brings forth discomfort. The fruits featured in Furutsu are not truly tropical, and even the flavors labeled as “tropical” originate from places unrelated to the tropics upon closer examination of the ingredients. Pineapple, a central element of Hawaiian pizza, was introduced to Hawaii with American capitalism and represents the cause of the Hawaiian kingdom’s collapse.

If that’s the case, what does the array of fruits displayed in Furutsu, arranged like still life paintings, mean to her? CHOI Kayoung considers these fruits as contemporary still lifes, each coexisting in an environment artificially stimulated by capital. As a trained Oriental painter, CHOI is undoubtedly familiar with the symbolism of the Four Gentlemen – plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum. However, given that the virtues of the Four Gentlemen are distant from contemporary concerns, new perspectives are often required to shed light on contemporary issues. Among the fruits in Furutsu, the dragon fruit, despite its vibrant appearance, possesses a subtle sweetness. CHOI skillfully captures the disparity between external and internal qualities. For the monstera, its aesthetic appeal as an interior decoration contrasts with its evolution to adapt and survive in a transplanted environment. Her exploration delves into the homogeneity between fruits and the human condition, emphasizing the necessity for survival skills in the face of environmental discrepancies. When asked if her perspective on this process is pessimistic or cynical, CHOI simplifies it by saying, “I tend to look at them as cute.” However, beneath this simplicity lies her complex feelings of compassion, understanding, and disgust, revealing the inhumanity of humans while challenging viewers to contemplate humanity within non-human entities. From Hawaii to Serbia to Furutsu, where “there are no people in the picture, but people are important,” CHOI’s formulated artistic space is convincingly thought-provoking.

The Statis/Stagnation of the Exotic Taste

Why, then, is there this twist, where exotic tastes take center stage externally but are ostracized internally? I couldn’t help but ask what is CHOI’s consciousness which can only be introduced after securing distance. She used the expression “stranger from afar” in reference to Furutsu. I was convinced by her assertion that maintaining a distance had become a habit to break free from the inertia of repetitive reflection. Reflective thinking, inherent to critical philosophy, involves internalizing the reconstruction of perception from external sources, prompting us to reconsider romanticization and idealization. Choosing to reclaim a deteriorating artifact of entertainment like Bugok Hawaii instead of letting it fade away, altering painterly conventions as modern landscape painting transforms into pixels on a monitor instead of a portrayal of life, and questioning the systems of production and consumption rooted in imperialism and capitalism as reflected in still life—all these endeavors address the byproducts of illusion and misperception. They highlight the illusion that we are sensing something even when it doesn’t physically touch our skin. While CHOI consistently emphasizes that illusion and idealization are half-hearted survival techniques for both humans and non-humans, her painterly task, as an artist, is one of completion and resetting. Despite occasional concerns about whether her themes are clearly conveyed in each solo exhibition due to the direct sensation conveyed by her painted images, I have high expectations for the overlapping and successive establishment of her tasks as a painter. CHOI, to me, resembles more of a filmmaker than just a painter. The continuity in her work, where even a single scene or object from one exhibition becomes the focal point of a connected worldview, exhibits her strength. The stasis of exoticism carries a living movement, much like the contraction and relaxation of the heart, moving forward in a way that avoids stagnation.

Hyunju KIM contemplates the gift value of art as an alternative to the commercialization of art. She intends to intervene as an art in social issues and problems of social minorities, and is more interested in nomadic activities than settlement.