Choi Nari
Artist Statement
My work expresses the desire that comes out of individuals and their relationships with others. And I symbolize various facets of our contemporaries by combining their tastes and visions of everyday experiences.
The characteristic images in my paintings derived from mayonnaise and tomato ketchup tubes are symbolic codes of men and women, and tell their stories in their own ways. The contrasting characteristics of the two sauces, such as colors, flavors, angular and circular shapes squeezed through the tubes, represent my dichotomous viewpoint toward men and women. They depict metaphorically human mind and curiosities about others, and sometimes reveals distorted desires and cravings.
My work first started by visualizing the confrontation and relationship between men and women, and then moved on to pictorializing various human desires covering quintessential ones like appetites for social or sexual desire and self-realization. In that context, my works titled ‘Every moment of you’, ‘Take it!’, ‘Garden of desire’, ‘Conversation needed!’ show the inner side and appearance of modern people in various ways.
The distinct feature of my paintings are represented by colors, shapes and lines. In my early days, based on the social stereotype of color code, I used blue for men and pink for women. But as I widened the subject of my work from fragmentary questions about gender to general questions about human, I began to focus on wider desire of contemporary people and use more diverse colors than before. Black lines in my paintings wrap up many different emotions of people painted in a variety of colors. The ways that colors are painted and the black lines used in my works emphasize symbolic associations among all the characters and connect various colors into one entity. This has become an important style in my practice.
Recent my works symbolically represent my experiences in this world and ask viewers questions about their attitude toward life. I hope that my work would be a pleasurable journey to find various desires in human lives.

송민호 콜라보레이션
2021, acrylic on canvas, 90.9 x 72.7 cm

Onim
2021, acrylic on canvas, 90.9 x 72.7 cm

Garden of Desire
2021, acrylic on canvas 130x162cm

Sexy Mayo
2021, acrylic & oil on canvas,45.5 x 53 cm

Sexy Mayo
2021, acrylic & oil on canvas,45.5 x 53 cm

Danse Macabre
2019, Acrylic on canvas, 194X130.3cm

Danse Macabre-1
2020, Acrylic on canvas, 100X80.3cm

I Will Wait For You
2017, Acrylic & Oil on canvas, 112X146cm

The pleasure of NO WAY OUT
2017, Acrylic & Oil on canvas, 112X146cm

One two, one two
2017, Acrylic & Oil on canvas, 73X61cm
Artist Biography
Born in 1983, Republic of Korea
Lives and works in Korea
Education
2009 MFA in Department of Western Painting, Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea
2007 BFA in Department of Western Painting, Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2021 Light My Fire, Artro Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2020 Light My Fire, Songmiyoung Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2020 Bihaeng-gi, ILWY Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2020 Colored Shadow, Space H&H, Seoul, South Korea
2019 The Shape of Water, Moon Space Star Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2019 Color's Dance, Surface Studio Seoul, Seoul, South Korea
2017 Two tickets, please, Brown Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2016 Every Moment, Kiss Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2014 Every Moment, E-Land Space, Seoul, South Korea
2012 Take it!, Santorini Seoul, Seoul, South Korea
2011 Garden of Desire, E-LAND Space, Seoul, South Korea
2009 Mato & Mayo encounter ‘between the’ or ‘relationships’, Gallery is, Seoul, South Korea
Selected Group Exhibitions
2021 SEOULLO MEDIA CANVAS 2021, Galley Pakyoung, Seoul, South Korea
2020 Super Collection, Superior Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2020 Black Line, Gallery Eugene Carpenter Shop, Seoul, South Korea
2019 Korean Art Support Project, Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2019 New Year's Eve, Art Space Hoseo, Seoul, South Korea
2018 Seeing Women, Art1: New Museum, Jakarta, Indonesia
2017 Sense and Sensibility, Kuandu Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
2017 Animamix Biennale, Art1: New Museum, Jakarta, Indonesia
2016 Persona, AYA (Art Core Brown) & Lebresson, Seoul, South Korea
2015 New Sensation, Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2015 To Empathy - Hangeul, Gwanghwamun Plaza, Seoul, South Korea
2015 FLAT IS DEEP, Naver Green Factory 2F Connect Hall, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
2014 12_twelve, Beyond Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2013 Poems of Hearts Korean Contemporary Female Art, Da Xiang Art Space, Taiwan
2012 Seoul Contemporary Art Star Festival, Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2012 Brand New - Wall & Window Painting, UNC Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2011 Poems of Hearts Korean Contemporary Female Art, Da Xiang Art Space, Taiwan
2010 The Spectrum of Pure Harmony, Providence University Art Center, Taiwan
2009 Weak Painting, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts & Da Xiang Art Space, Taipei & Taichung, Taiwan
2009 Art Road 77 - with art, with artist!, 93 Museum, Heyri, South Korea
2009 Bluedot Asia 2009, Seoul Arts Center - Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
Public Collections
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, South Korea
Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
ELAND Foundation for the Arts & Culture, Seoul, South Korea
Hana Bank, Seoul, South Korea
Hotel Leo, Jeju, South Korea
Hotel Kensington, Seoul, South Korea