codychoi.creatorlink.netCODY CHOI

Stay signed in Forgot password? LOGIN FACEBOOK Not a member yet? Register now Toggle navigation CODYCHOI li > a" data-font="true" data-title="메뉴 폰트">ABOUT PORTFOLIO CONTACT Cody Choi, visual artist and cultural theorist was born in Seoul in 1961. He attended Korea University Sociology major, Korea and Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California, USA. He taught at New York University, New York, USA from 1994 - 2004 and Hongik University, Seoul, Korea from 2004 - 2011. He currently works in Seoul Korea. His artwork has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions in Europe, USA and Asia. His exhibitions include retrospective " Cody Choi: Culture Cuts" traveling in European from 2015 - 2017 and 2017 Venice Biennale Korean Pavilion. He is the author and co-author of "Cody Choi: Culture Cuts, König books, Germany, 2015", "Topography of 20th Century Culture. Culturegrapher, Korea, 2010", "Topography of Contemporary Culture. Culturegrapher, Korea, 2006", "Topography of 20th Century Culture for Understanding Contemporary Culture. Ahn Graphics, Korea, 2006", "Cultural Shift Hatter: Cody Choi 1986-2003, Paradise Media Press, Korea, 2003", “Cody Choi Fairwell to the 20th Century, Deitch Projects, New York, 1998" Cultural Indigestion “How hard it is to digest one’s fellow men! First principle: to summon one’s courage as in misfortune, to fall to boldly, to admire oneself in the process, to grit one’s teeth on one’s repugnance, and to swallow one’s nausea. (Friedrich Nietzsche)”, Beginning in the later 1980s Cody Choi impetuously fabricated his own visceral legend. Now, near the end of the second decade of the 21 st century, he stares himself down as it creates him back. Choi relocated with his family from Seoul, Korea, to the U.S. at the age of 22, and his story is founded in the collision and fragmentation of cultures, in the disturbance, sublimation and reallocation of a shifted sexuality, and in the ironic armament he musters to wage surrogate war with the titanic period icons of Western visual culture – classical Greek sculpture, Michelangelo, Auguste Rodin. Choi’s career-long investigation turns on the symbolic weight, moral burden, cultural achievements and social costs of the “economic miracle” achieved in South Korea during the artist’s lifetime, beginning in the decade following the end of the Korean War in 1953. – John C. Welchman, 2017 This is a conception of space that is territorial and not symbolic. When I look at Cody Choi’s paintings I see the dark space of the army blankets as a territory in dispute, as the site of a war of cultures. Here, various culture-specific poetic systems battle it out. I would assume then that this is what the viewer on either side of the ocean will discern: that these paintings are views of an unstable world - a dyspeptic universe. – Mike Kelley, 1992. Cody's Good/Evil Gangbusters Gloden Boy Poster : Cody’s legend Vs. heideggar in Bagsværd Church Medium: Photo Collage Size: 127 x 173 cm Year: 1986 / 1993 Dialectic Shampoo Medium: C-Print Size: 61 x 81 cm Year: 1992 The Thinker Medium: Pepto-bismol, Toilet Paper, Wood, Plaster Size: 112 x 91.5 x 282 cm Year: 1995-96 Cody's Legend vs. Freud's Shit Box Medium:Bronze, Steel, Wood, Straps Size: 96.5 x 96.5 x 355.6 cm Year: 1994/2014 Scamps, Scram Medium: Wood, Banding Strap Size: 118 x 35 x 26(h) inches Year: 1994 Bad Drawing (Post-Conceptual Poem based on Western Body Theory) Medium: Ink on Paper Size: 109 × 150 cm Year: 1992-1993 Downside is Heavy Medium: Neon Size: 102 x 120 cm Year: 2010-11 Venetian Phapsody The power of Bluff Medium: Neon, LED Collage Size: 1243 x 1033 cm Year: 2016-17 Venetian Rhapsody is the collage of neon images from Las Vegas Holiday Motel(shelter), Macau Golden Dragon Casino(money), St. Louis Peacock Loop Dinner(food) and Patrick Tuttofuoco's Sign Language(welcome) image from instagram Caro Karter Venetian Phapsody The power of Bluff Medium: Neon, LED Collage Size: 1750 x 388 cm Year: 2018 Color Haze Medium: Moving Light, Glass, Fog Machine Size: Variable Year: 2016-17 image from blog.naver.com/sona image from www.flickr.com/photos/immacolata_giordano Episteme Sabotage-Shit Medium: Oil on Cavas, cloth, thread Size: 45.7 x 73.6 cm Year: 2014 Episteme Sabotage-Fuck Medium: Oil on Cavas, cloth, thread Size: 45.7 x 73.6 cm Year: 2014 Power of Bluff-Free Orgasm Medium: Neon, Light Bulb, Stainless Steel, Candy Paint, Electric Sensor Size: 33.6(h) x 200 x 12 cm Year: 2017 Queen Mother of the West: Olympia Medium: Mixed Media Size: 64(h) x 100 x 80 cm Year: 2016 Myungshimbogam-Virtue124 Medium: Oil, Acrylic, Wood, Mirror Size: 170 × 65 cm Year: 2017 The Gift 4 Midium: Vutek Ink on Canvas, Children Shoes, Marker Pen Size: 251 x 142 cm Year: 2008 Noblesse Hybridige Noblesse Hybridige Bartomeu Mari Hybrid Nobles. On The Recent Work of Cody Choi, 2020 John C. Welchman Cultural Indigestion: The Work of Cody Hyun Choi, 2017 Laurence A. Rickels Rebirth as Author, 2017 Gregor Jansen Behind the Mirrors: Aspects of Reflection in the Work of Cody Hyun Choi, 2015 Marie de Brugerolle Cody Hyun Choi: Canons/Cannons, 2015 Mike Kelley Dyspecptic Universe: Cody Hyun Choi's Peto-Bismol Paintings, 1992 HYBRID NOBLES. ON THE RECENT WORK OF Bartomeu Marí , 2020 For centuries, East and West have looked at each other with interest, fear, respect, distrust, admiration, greed, mutual ignorance… everything but innocence. The glances from one to the other sometimes meant gains for both, but more often than not sought to impose or pillage, rather to understand, learn or gain insight. It does not seem to me that things have changed much in the era of high technology, new arms races, the post Cold War and the new world (dis)order, where this “ocular” relationship is merely based on the idea each side has of the other. But today, certainly both parties in this relationship know each other better. Even if we are oblivious to history—both that of the other and our own—, nowadays it is easier for the fascination of the images we perceive to generate respect and admiration, although sometimes fear and distrust. The artist’s personal experience and the “glances” that East and West have been crossing each other since the second half of the 20th century are at the basis of practically all of Cody Choi’s oeuvre, whose most recent production is now shown in Beijing and is the subject of this publication. I propose to visually and virtually “visit” the exhibition and its works first, and then delve into its analysis to seek explanations or arguments that illuminate the artist’s creative decisions. The works in the exhibition are divided into two large groups and include, in the first place, pieces that have been made recently and to which I refer primarily in this essay. Under the generic title of “Noblesse Hybridige,” they constitute an accurate summary of his career, yet in a cultivated and strongly ironic key. In a second group we find representative works of various episodes in the artist’s career. “Noblesse Hybridige” is, in itself, a double hybrid. On the one hand, it originates from the expression “noblesse oblige” that refers to the moral demands of those who consider themselves to be of a superior class, or those who have power, fame, or financial resources. Privileges amount to, or are coupled with, obligations to those who do not have them. The phrase has a clear French origin and it has been imported into English directly from the original, although formulations of identical meaning are found in Greek and Latin authors from the Antiquity. The second level of hybridization in the title of Cody Choi’s work is in the verb of the expression, which merges two concepts: moral obligation and hybridization itself. Choi invents a neologism that irreverently amalgamates these two notions. The paintings are also an example of aesthetic and cultural hybridization, as most, if not the entirety of Choi’s work can be characterized. In this case, “Noblesse Hybridige” consists of ...