Flower Tree
2008 - Sculpture (Sculpture)
Choi Jeong-Hwa
The application of bright colors and kitsch materials in Flower Tree manifests a playful comment on the influence of popular culture and urban lifestyle. And though his works share a similar sensibility to Claes Oldenburg’s oversized sculptures from everyday objects, Choi draws from his immediate surroundings and life experience. Public sculptures with a flower theme are often used to decorate the rapidly urbanized cities in Asia, which are constructed with concrete and steel materials. Ironically, these public sculptures are usually also superficial and made from the same unnatural materials. Thus, while seeming to be a celebration of nature’s beauty and the need for imagination when living in an environment with a diminishing natural aesthetic, Flower Tree embodies the paradox of modern life.
Using a broad range of media and materials including video, moulded plastic, inflatable fabrics, shopping trolleys, real and fake food, lights, wires, and kitsch Korean artifacts, Choi Jeong-Hwa’s practice blurs the boundaries between art, graphic design, industrial design, and architecture. Along with artists such as Bahc Yiso, Beom Kim, and Lee Bul, Choi was part of a generation whose unique and varied practices gave rise to Seoul’s burgeoning art scene in the 1990s. Trained in Korea during a period of rapid modernization and economic growth, Choi’s work acknowledges and internalizes the processes of consumption and the distribution of goods and has resulted in his being recognized as the leader of Korea’s pop art movement. Often infusing his works with a hint of humor, Choi creates monumental installation with everyday objects. His works also touch on issues of accessibility in art and contemporary culture, concepts of individual authorship and originality in art, and they comment on the privileged environment of art institutions and the prized status of artworks amidst a consumer-frenzied world.
Colors:
Related works featuring themes of: » Architecture in Art, » Art That Plays With Scale, » Assemblage, » Consumerism, » Contemporary Participation, » Korean
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