Galería Pelaires' Cabinet space is hosting the solo exhibition by Minyoung Choi Tangent Worlds. Curated by Cristina Anglada, it features the South Korean artist's new series of watercolours.
Minyoung Choi (Seoul, 1989) lived in regions such as Japan and California before moving to London —where she currently lives. Over the years she has built up a body of work in which worlds unfold within worlds, developing a whole imaginary universe that draws on symbols from different cultures, while incorporating fragments of her own nostalgic memories that are the result of her nomadic life. A vast personal mythology that combines memories of her passion for animal documentaries, the Shinto and fantastic animation of Miyazaki, certain influences from Buddhist philosophy, Confucianism, Western religious oil painting, Giorgio de Chiricos paintings or the surrealism of Breton or Renée Magritte.
Minyoung Choi's Tangent Worlds is a series of watercolours made specifically for Pelaires. According to curator Cristina Anglada, this technique is particularly interesting for the artist, as it enables her to express and experiment everything that intrigues her through freedom, speed and delicacy, extending her fingers to grasp the elusive feeling left by a dream. The ephemerality of life bathes her visual constructions in melancholy, a hybrid of dreams, memories and everyday reality. Choi sketches the multiple variants of the liminal space that slips between the world of possible materiality and ethereal illusion, thus offering the opportunity for uncertainty and interpretation.
All of Choi's work emphasises atmosphere and environment; the background is moved to the foreground and the setting becomes the subject. The moon, the sun, a campfire, the eyes of a cat or starry beings shed a light that cohere the scene, populated by diverse existential powers. Images in which we perceive a mute tension, which could be the fruit of actions and situations imagined by the characters featured in these strange ecosystems. Formally, they show a kind of sublime phosphorescence associated with the use of a palette of bright, vivid colours that the artist uses instinctively and with which she manages to suggest that which rational language would structure in too much detail.
