Korean Installation Artist: Choi Jeong Hwa (b. 1961)

According to MMCA, Choi Jeong Hwa’s work is  ‘a metaphor for post-1990s Korean society, borne of rapid economic growth‘.

He has exhibited all around the world and is this year’s artist in the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Seoul. The exhibition is on until Feb 10, 2019 and if you are in Seoul and looking for exhibitions, then this one is well worth a visit.

Start off by taking a look at the dramatic Dandelion outside the museum. The artist works with everyday objects, often made of plastic, that have been thrown away turning the mundane into Art.

Dandelion is made up of 7,000 kitchen pots and pans donated by the public!

In a Joongang Daily interview Choi Jeong Hwa said that ’Objects are just objects when people fail to notice their aesthetic and spiritual aspects. But the objects change when an artist uses them while invoking both their visual power and spirituality’. 

Blooming Matrix

Inside the museum is the installation called Blooming Matrix, 120 towers of ‘flowers’ stacked with different materials that the artist has collected from around the world. ‘Through a forest of some 120 erect towers of flowers, in a space where light and darkness contrast, the artist blends time and space and connects heaven and earth, transforming the gallery into a space of silence and memory.’ (MMCA)

There are objects made of wood, glass, metal, and even rocks. Kitchen pots and pans, tables, wooden weaving shuttles, brushes, bangles, and candle sticks amongst other things are stacked into ‘towers of flowers’. Discarded items so common before the industrialisation of Korea now seem from a different world. Plastic disposable things are a reminder of the materialism of today.

Using everyday Korean things

Before an exhibition Choi Jeong Hwa first visits nearby markets so that the installation has a local connection. And there is certainly a Korean feel to this exhibition at the MMCA in Seoul.

There’s a stack of square wooden measuring containers once seen on market stalls but not common any more. A tower of wooden ceremonial dishes used for ancestral rites. A stack of Korean pillows (above) traditionally stuffed with buckwheat and embroidered with Chinese characters (often with the character for good luck 福), or flowers and birds. 

The hand embroidered pillows have a human and personal touch suggesting a time when life was slower than today. They contrast dramatically with a tower of modern orange and pink machine-made plastic sieves. 

The relationship between stone stacks and religion

In his interview the artist explained ‘my motif of stacking up objects has the meaning of prayer linking heaven and Earth, as stacks across time and space – ranging from primitive cairns to ancient Egyptian pyramids and Buddhist pagodas – had such meanings and intentions’.

I felt very drawn to these stacks of everyday objects and they immediately reminded me of the doltap stone stacks that can be found in mountains here. There may be just a few small pebbles piled up for good luck by a passing hiker or larger conical cairns. When we walked up Mungyeong Saejae Provincial Park we saw lots of them.

Apparently the worship of stone stacks is based on the principle of the permanence and unchangeability of rocks. And stone stacks were often put up at village entrances to protect against disease, evil forces, fire, and tiger attacks, and even to counterbalance geographical features thought to be inauspicious in geomancy (feng shui).

The longer I stayed at the exhibition the more I became lost in my own thoughts. It’s an exhibition essentially made up of things that people have thrown away. The Art is made of rubbish and yet I wanted to take a tower home with me. The recycled utensils and everyday things have indeed become desirable art! See more examples of the artist’s work on Pinterest.