Choi Hye-young's New Discovery of Nature

The Aesthetic Pleasure of Addition and Reduction

Sanghee Jung (Art Critic)

Choi Hye-young develops an evolving perspective throughout her works from a critical mind to the focus on materials and to an aesthetic pleasure of visualization. Her critical perspective on the environment around the land redevelopment areas that has crumbled and collapsed presents a new discovery of the beauty of natural shapes and colors created amidst destruction and confusion. Just like a travel for enjoying the beauty of the nature, she goes on the journey to those places crumbled and collapsed over time. This is the moment when an object of interest of the artist with critical thinking starts to move toward materials; at that moment, she focuses more on the life cycle of materials from creation to destruction rather than criticizing the reality of what is happening. The process of experiencing the space and place first hand, developing criteria for selecting images and producing art through addition and reduction, continued or occasional, lies at the heart of this very private aesthetic experience.

Choi’s taping work - the repetition of addition and reduction – began with her compassing and defiance in the face destruction of the environment including those land redevelopment areas. Such emotions came from her venturing into many districts where rich and poor people reside including land redevelopment areas and from experiencing first hand the changes that took place inside those areas. Growing discontent with the urban land redevelopment policy, which was recklessly implemented without taking into account the delicate situations of poor people the main theme of her works. She raises an alarm about the destruction we cause and our tendency to turn a blind eye to the history and traces of what is inside, which is symbolized in her work; it is similar to what can be found in the general image of a map where the entire land is divided into a number of big frame in a uniformed and standardized manner without showing what is really inside. Skepticism takes root where pain and sorrow are simply dismissed in the process of the transformation and reshaping of a city.

Her sympathy and resistance against destruction is visualized by taping work, which acts as a metaphor for the repetitive actions of creation and destruction by humans. Instead of using colors, the commonly used material in painting, she chose duct tape with a relatively short life span to express the temporary features of various situations. At first, the artist cut off and stuck together large pieces of duct tape to bring the image of the landscape of her choice. Like the geometrical from of the earth is created when looking down from satellite. Choi reconstructed various landscapes in geometrical figures. However before long she realized that, while she criticized as a third party the ongoing destruction of land redevelopment areas with a hope to to keep those areas as they were, residents there wished to see their living space improve so that it could bring them greater financial benefits at the end of the day. Her sympathy vanished when she realized it came from the arrogance she had as a person who belonged to the haves. Such realization led her to a skeptical view about her ability for true and direct interpretation of what had been experienced indirectly; she was just an observer of the situation and therefore was not in a position to talk about land redevelopment areas as if it had been her won story. By deeply understanding that her sympathy and criticism on the situation could mot be real, she began to grasp visual pleasures from those spaces with no critical view involved.

The central image of her works starts at the moment of discontinuation; destruction and collapsed does not mean the closure of an event or process. It is a link from one process to another, which develops into an image. Initially when she felt sympathetic about those land redevelopment areas, she searched for images of complete collapse to convey the message of an endless cycle of creation and destruction with her duct tape instead of colors, thus she wanted to erase the traces of discontinuation. But now she focuses on the process, not the site of complete destruction as a result of it, to discover what has been hidden beneath it; the moments of creation and destruction lead to new aesthetic pleasures out of coincidence and consequence.

On some of the walls destroyed, Choi found pieces of duct tape made of cotton mesh; when she saw the cotton backing with tight weaves and high thread counts on the back of torn and shredded pieces, a different way of looking at the world came to her mind. It was when her interest was taken to another level beyond the seen; just like the molecules of air that one cannot see, she pays attention to objects unseen yet existing that weave our world. She reflects in her works the fact that what is seen is not the entirety of it. This is why she uses duct tape instead of colors as a material for her art, which requires more time and energy to be put into the creation of it. By putting on the canvas the pieces of duct tape with the cotton backing knitted loosely flowy, she tries to emphasize that, in this world, there are hidden and unseen networks intertwined.

In the process of adding the pieces of tapes onto the canvas, she discovered the beauty and harmony in the natural yet incomplete structure. However she soon realized that the more you are obsessed with what you have gained, the more chances of losing, and that you can gain more by giving. She stated to take off the pieces of tapes stuck on the canvas. For her, putting and taking them off is the same ritual as drawing and erasing sketches by other artists. As she experienced the same image can look different with a change of distance; when seen from close and from distance, one can understand that his view will change depending on the level of intervention as a person deeply involved or an observer.

Choi Hye-young's works completely overturns the conventional view that practicality is the best and most effective in this capitalist society. With a hope to add a more variety of forms and shapes to artworks beyond the canvas, the artist wants to more away from limited boundaries to widen the horizon of her interest into deep within and out to the world through the aesthetic exercise of addition and reduction. ■