Exposure

July 2007

In 2003, the government of South Korea burned over thirty of Mr. Choi’s paintings and drawings, on the charge that they were disquieting and lewd. This shocking act of censorship bears witness to the still-controversial nature of frank depictions of sexual desire, decades after the sexual revolution.

Mr. Choi has long believed that pornography and art need not be mutually exclusive, and that pornographic imagery is an especially apt metaphor for this modern, capitalist world that both sells and censors sexual expression and desire. The rough strokes of paint on canvas belie the deceptively licentious subject matter, and thereby point to the growing disconnect between capitalism’s embrace of sexual imagery as a means of commerce - even when that entails transforming young girls into sexual objects in order to advertise products - and the strain of near-puritanical conservatism professed by many of the very same self-avowed capitalists.

Unlike the work of other artists who blur the boundaries between art and pornography, Mr. Choi’s art seems fixated on female genitalia, typically the only unclothed body part of his subjects. The allure is not romantic or even erotic, but base and bestial. Metaphorically, the arousing young women depicted can stand for our morally bankrupt society: at once desirable and disturbing, these women stir up the basest of desires, lust and the desire to possess – yet they retain power for themselves, by inciting unattainable desire, frustrating all attempts of the observer to possess them.

Kyungtae Choi lives and works in Korea. His work has been seen extensively in South Korea since the early 1980s, and has been the subject of nearly a dozen solo exhibitions in Korea. This is Mr. Choi’s first solo exhibition outside of Korea.