At Johyun Gallery Busan, we are proud to present Choi Byung Hoon’s solo exhibition starting from October 21st until Christmas this season. The artist is Korea’s first, to show the genre of ‘art furniture’, creating artworks that harmonize principles, goods, and awes and respect towards nature together. Choi is shown for the third time at Johyun Gallery, and through this particular show, we introduce to you his recent works that carry an extraordinary energy filled with Korean’s passionate mind.
‘Art Furniture’ can be defined as unique design art which holds not only artistic aspect but also practicality—“aesthetic furniture” in which the artist’s creative world is melted into furniture, that naturally roots into our everyday lives. Art Furniture, which is created by a rational concept that thinks of both art and practicality, expresses the value of art; it can be seen as the art’s core that gathers art, crafts, and design together in creating a particular space into various forms.
Choi Byung Hoon started with his ‘collected insects’ series back in 1980s when understandings and demands on art furniture were not so much asked. For the first time in Korea, Choi attempted at the new genre where art, design, and woodcrafts were grafted in 1990. The artist picks aesthetic consciousness that is carried within a shape, as the most crucial element in art furniture; there he creates artworks inquiring “Korean Identity” born within our “state of nature”, traditional objet, and our own unique culture using materials from nature like rocks and woods. Choi’s works reveal naturalness of rocks and essence of woods in its most unpretentious way, leading us not only towards a world of practicality but also world of self-examination and meditation through its oriental beauty.
The artist metaphorically expresses the heaviness and lightness, the roughness and smoothness, and the hardness and softness, having materials carrying opposite qualities such as wood and metal to confront and contrast each other—creating rare, creative shapes. Rocks that have been carved and washed for long period time with oriental state of nature as background radiate silence and serenity; wood that shows smooth lines and cures and partially added metal materials simply harmonize in its natural form. Choi Byung Hoon’s works reveal the unity between nature with its noble beauty, and exceeds satisfaction of its purpose—ultimately showing the artist’s goal to make our lives more lyrical and beautiful.
Johyun Gallery is proud to show you Choi’s works that are being recognized not only domestically, but also internationally of its deeply hidden nature’s breaths and serenity through this exhibition.
About the Artist
Choi Byung Hoon sits in the top place in art furniture genre in Korea. He studied both his bachelor and masters in Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea. Choi worked and had numerous solo shows and invitational shows in Paris, Seoul, and Busan. With nature’s fruits that survived eternal time, the artist expresses Oriental’s simple yet noble beauty. He was the first and only Korean to have his works collected by Vitra Design Museum in Switzerland. Currently, he is a professor at Hong-Ik University in the art department—opening a way for the next generation of artists to a brand new realm of art.
