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.
Sign #1 , Sign #2 , Sign #3 were included in “Found Object Assembly”, Copeland’s 2009 solo show at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco...
The Possibility of the Half by Minouk Lim is a two-channel video projection that begins with a mirror image of a weeping woman kneeling on the ground...
Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage...
Kwan Sheung Chi’s work One Million is a video work depicting the counting of bills...
Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure...
With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...
Uncertain Pilgrimage is an ongoing project in which Moore draws from his unplanned travels in recent years...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
Composed of four images, the series Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta (2011) explores the artist’s observation of how Javanese mythology and cosmology have marked the geography of Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Indonesia...
In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...
A steel clothing rack adorned with turbine vents, Moroccan vintage jewelry, pinecones and knitting yarn, these heterogeneous elements are used here to create an exotic yet undefined identity within the work...