Jun Ji-hye, a reporter at the finance desk of The Korea Times, focuses primarily on economic policy and government agencies, mainly covering the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the Ministry of Budget and Planning, the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service. She previously covered financial authorities, including the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service, and earlier worked on the political, city and business desks, reporting on a wide range of issues.
Painter Choi delves into lines, colors
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Choi Wool-ga will open a solo exhibition in Yongsan, Seoul, Wednesday.
By Jun Ji-hye
By Jun Ji-hye
Choi Wool-ga, a noted South Korean painter based in New York, opened a solo exhibition in his home country Wednesday for the first time in five years.
Titled “Are You There,” Choi is showing 12 new paintings and two sculptures at Gallery 101 in Yongsan, Seoul. The exhibition runs until May 15.
“I had mainly focused on drawing lines for more than 10 years. But I recently have shifted to a mix of lines and colors. This exhibition is the first to show those works in Seoul,” Choi said in a recent interview.
He said he rarely holds solo exhibitions in Korea as he usually completes only seven to eight works a year.
“I was not able to accept invitations from Korean galleries due to the small number of my works. But the young owners of Gallery 101, Lee Seung-min and Jung Hye-yeon, moved my mind as they impressed me with their vision of the exhibition planning, stressing solidarity with painters,” he said.
Before moving to New York in 1999, Choi initially settled in Paris, France.
“I left for Paris in the mid-1980s to follow the footsteps of Paul Gauguin, whom I have admired since childhood. Then, Paris was a vibrant city filled with artists from around the world,” he said.
Choi studied Art at Ecole Boulle, the National Decorative Art School and Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Versailles in Paris
He decided to move to the United States in 1999 as he saw many galleries in Paris being closed due to economic contraction. “At the time, I felt a gap between art and society,” he said.
In 2001 in New York, he witnessed a scene he will never forget.
“I saw the September 11 terror attacks against the World Trade Center towers as my then workroom was quite close to the attacked building. Being so shocked, I just wandered from place to place in Manhattan without doing anything for a week,” he said.
He said, since then, he has started using new materials for his art, which he assumed was influenced by his emotional shock following the tragic event.
Another event Choi recalled was when, in 2008, he burned all his previous works.
“From that moment, I took as my aim producing masterpieces, rather than paying too much attention to the number of works,” he said.
He added life in New York eventually served as the momentum for him to seek a freer style of drawing.
Choi, who held his first solo exhibition at the age of 24, has held 30 exhibitions in New York. He has also participated in group exhibitions in Japan, France and Korea and is the author of five art books. The latest, “Black & White,” was published in February by HnH Creative and shows the changes in his paintings over the last 35 years.
Choi can be reached at
. For more information on his Seoul exhibition, call (02) 797-3093.