PARIS.- Almine Rech announced the representation of Korean artist Choi Myoung Young in Europe, United States, United Kingdom, and Asia (except Korea and Japan). The gallery will present his first solo exhibition at Almine Rech Paris, Matignon opening on September 7, 2023.
In my work, I impose conditions on my painting process to help the paintings acheive their fundamental state, which is, ultimately, a flat plane. Choi Myoung Young
Born in Haeju, Hwanghae-do, in 1941, Choi defected to South Korea during the Korean War and grew up in Gunsan and Incheon. In 1957, he began studying art at Incheon National School of Education under master artist Chung Sanghwa after which he entered the Hongik University College of Fine Arts in 1960 to study painting.
After graduating college in 1964, Choi spent the remainder of the decade as a member of the art groups Origin Society (19631993), Korean Avant-Garde Association (A.G., 19701973), and École de Seoul (19751999), and participated in the likes of the Paris Biennale (1967) and São Paulo Biennale (1969) to set his foot in the art scene as an emerging artist.
Since the mid-1970s, Choi has persistently explored using his body and the relationship between the canvas plane and the medium of paint under the theme of conditional planes, repeating and varying physical actions on top of the flat surface to understand painterly existence. In the mid-1970s, the artist produced what are known today as the sandpaper and fingerprint series.
Throughout the mid-1980s and the 1990s, Chois repetitive movements took on vertical and horizontal orientations to settle as his unique methodology and style.
Choi often uses the expression monotonous to describe his works. Creating superficial space composed of regular unitsby performing repetitive actions within the frame of the blank, quadrilateral canvascan be seen as a daily act of validating existence.
The canvas as a background no longer distinguishes or restrains art and life. Just as the body and the mind are no longer subjects for distinction, the conditional plane is now an existential platform, an infinite space that serves to intertwine and reveal the artists repetitive actions. This is precisely why Chois creative world is a demonstration of controlling monotony, something that ceaselessly flows toward infinite variations.