The Stolbun Collection launched it’s Summer Exhibition Series 2015 with current MFA grad, Hyegyeong “G” Choi last week. The Stolbun Collection exists in an apartment building overlooking the Chicago River, with views of the Lake Michigan, and surround architectural gems. Choi’s work was installed in the bedroom and one piece in the bathroom of the apartment.
Choi’s work expresses her turbulent past sexual experiences and current relationships to men through her paintings. She uses bright colors, sculptural elements, and various paint mediums to confront the viewer with her content. By having the work in the pristine apartment environment, Choi’s work came to the fore. With the natural light pouring into the bedroom, the viewer is able to see the nuanced, painterly strategies that Choi employs, where she might perhaps sneak in a secret glossy phallic form that can only be seen in proper lighting.
With Choi’s work specifically, the space is not just a bedroom exhibiting the work, it acts as an entire installation where one can consider the bed as an object in relation to the paintings. We can then ask whose room is this? Who wakes up to these paintings? Is this the bed where the activity in these paintings take place? Probably not, but it is fun to think as such. Choi has often expressed that her paintings explore ideas about sexual desire and how she can subvert and pervert these desires. In this show, I enjoy pondering over the person who “owns” these paintings and perhaps lives his or her desires vicariously through Choi’s painted perversions.
Self Sex in Sauna, 2015
The Juicy Man, 2015
