An adequate balance in work and life is important to me. In order to prevent myself from becoming completely geared towards just work or life, I occasionally steal myself away through any one of a number of open doors into my hiding places. Being not overly swayed by either possibility, I agonize over my lack of will power and depth, but yet I enjoy greater freedom.

Perfect balance is the most effervescent and temporal of things. It's rather like a meditative trance. The moment I feel relieved, the moment I forget even the fact I’m immersed, the moment I no longer perceive the passage of time, it disappears. The fleeting balance may be both a result of a sort of transaction and a magical gift like a sweet midnight dream.

My work and life are metaphors for my eyes, that is, one is for the interior and the other for the exterior, one for life and other for death, life and art, and so forth. I have come to the realization that the balance of my perception is a result from my simple and mundane life.
- Notes from the artist’s work diary, 2014   

This exhibition is about a fragile, momentary balance between art and life. I dealt with this subject in previous exhibitions, The Way Home, A Small Garden, The Golden Blanket, Missing Home, and A Refuge, in which I attempted to link a delicate balance between two contrasting works of art in a seemingly implausible situation.

Two works that represent an “Interior” that is revealed and an “Exterior” that is concealed are placed in separate spaces of different emotions. The “Interior” is barely defined by only a framework of thin golden strings, and the “Exterior” is a milky white flimsy shell. The works contrast; their meanings contrast. The contrast between the interior and exterior, however, tells us that only when the two coexist can they move toward becoming a whole single world. After all, only when the interior and exterior are combined does their essence, a house, reveal itself.

Distinct drawings are drawn on the wall between the two works, and articles are placed in between as if they were the centers of balance.
- Sung-Im Choi (artist)

*image (left)
Four furrows, 2014
wood, gold leaf, variable dimension
© Sung-Im Choi
courtesy of SongEun ArtCube