PAINTING PROTOCOLS

Gallery Huue is delighted to present Painting Protocols, the gallery’s first solo exhibition by Insun Choi. The exhibition features a collection of new and recents works alongside the depictions of figures and interiors for which the works are rarely shown to the public.

Due to COVID 19 situation, the exhibition requires a mandatory pre-booking.

Painting Protocols encircles themes and subjects that are personal to the artist in recent years such as "Light of Rawness" and " Language is Painting". Insun Choi's paintings, intensely deep in palette and many large in scale, celebrate the physicality of touch and intuitive sensitivity that stems from his unique approach to the subjects. This collection of works continue the artist's decades-long exploration of the ways in which the representation of images, figures, and nature that is ultimately semi-imprinted on our conscious and unconscious selves affected by our relationship to physical objects, memories, and time. 

Insun Choi's concept of painting in constant generation, evolution and development is highlighted in this proposed presentation. The artist often paints his subjects at a remove, from photographs of fashion magazines, images of masterpieces like that of Vincent Van Gogh, and visuals from numerous articles, although resulting portraits and figures are far from being objective or idealized images. How images are assembles, collected, appropriated and expanded to create other images, and how, at the same time, they change, or are transformed, distorted, or held at different perspective, is an abstraction and a very unique point where the artist begins to reflect on himself as well as deliver a message. 

Since the 2000s, the artist realized how definite the change of consciousness can be and pushed forward on his belief that language is the essential element of culture and civilization, which can also be a beginning point for wonder. Choi believed and still believes that visual language is to be an undeniable “code (sign)” of the invisible world, distinctly depicting language in relation to painting like a protocol that focuses on means of the mind and thoughts.

Face is Painting — An Object within an Object, 2019-20, Oil on Canvas, 194x259cm

"The greater the accumulation of the stratum of unit called horizon, the clearer the concept of vertical becomes. The vertical being that emerges begins to accumulate within it units of the horizontal. I assume the substance of the horizontal to be nature/human beings/the visible world, and that of the vertical to be God/eternal/immutable/the invisible world.

At this point, I experience oneness in which the vertical is the horizontal and the horizontal is the vertical. In my works, these two elements are corresponding to each other’s existence, dreaming of a beautiful structure. Perhaps, it is a text like a boat that is to make a voyage on the atypical sea of abstraction towards the potential of the vertical and the horizontal in oneness. Then, I see the white canvas beginning to form an endless sea.

The potential of the horizontal extends into the vertical and the potential of the vertical works into the horizontal, making the horizontal all the more abundant."

Insun’s Artist Note, 2008

However, it turns out that he has worked based on human and its essential areas in that those properties are directly connected to human sensitivity. In addition, his works reveal the sensitivity is comprehended through the artist’s intuition. Therefore, he stacked the paths of sensitivity about the world comprehended from his inner side on the canvas through thick layers of paints rather than putting a thick layer of simple substance called paint on the canvas. That’s why his paintings become one of the perception places that gives a chance of experiencing vicarious senses of the world that the artist touches with his sensitivity through visual sense of touch instead of seeing the objects or the world with eyes.

(1) A Moving Table and a Woman being Still, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 130.3x194cm

(2) Gogh's Woman, 2018-21, Oil on Canvas, 130.3x194cm  

Painting Protocols by Insun Choi is on view until January 13, 2022. For more information, please do not hesitate to contact the gallery.