Extinction

Coming off the heels of her latest solo exhibition at  Harper's Los Angeles Whisper Temptations in My Ear, the playful and meditative artist has poured herself into works that explore the self-questioning of perception and hypotheticals— often through an irreverent lens. Stretching each canvas, gluttonous depictions appear other-worldly, centering conversation surrounding body image and identity. Although each piece speaks to various imaginative states drenched in neon, Choi teeters a fine line between fantasy and reality, prompting the viewer to open themselves up.

"I always battle between, what's really believable, and what's unbelievable in my work, and sometimes the figures can be more virtual and unrealistic, but also the world they are in could be that. I have to leave room for the viewers. It might be very celebratory and festival-like with the toxic, candy colors that I'm inviting you to, and then you come in, walk around the work, and at the end, we figure out that there's something kind of fucked up in there. You feel some catharsis in it. There's pure joy that you get, but sometimes you also feel something is wrong; it's like eating candy, right? If you eat candy, you feel so good, like you love it, and I want to eat it, but you know, that's not good for you either. Right? It's kind of an illusion," she says.

Approaching each piece in a fluid sense, like her identity, Choi's characters play in tandem, stripped of societal confines– an acceptance of self and the unknown. "The things that people don't understand. I don't understand myself either. So I like to talk about that ambiguity, not because I want to be honest. Like, if I'm confused about this, I'm going to talk about that. I'm not gonna try to define this. I'm just gonna live my life because if not, that's stress, right?" she explains. While each figure poses nude or partially nude with indecipherable genitalia and odes to feminity, Choi is intentional when drawing on gender to contextualize a thought or past experience. She notes, "I started creating either super gendered figures or like genderless figures, and it has to do with my experiences; dating a lot of people and doing some stuff or when I'm more of the villain character in my life, I make more genderless, more outrageous works. When I'm more reserved, then it's more genderless."

A curiosity unwaveringly matched with a technique that makes the inconceivable conceivable, Choi's use of pigment holds a lot of the work's allure, bringing to life the fantastical through impasto and fine oil details. After years of practice building color and working with various mediums, Choi has bridged her lessons from one material to the next. "When you do watercolor, the material itself is so sensitive. So if you make one mistake, it can dull the color. So it's like very sensitive. So I learned how to build and sculpt objects by color without dulling the color. That's why I think that all these little changes over colors or vibrations of the colors happen through that practice," she states.

Painting portals into dimensions where pieces of her identity lives, among other wild thoughts, Choi's work is not only influenced by raw emotions but simplicities like a comfort meal or feelings of home. "I made this painting called Rice Power at the show, the orange kitchen painting in the back. Personally, that's like one of my favorite paintings in the show because it explains my habits. Koreans survive the day like we're parsing through the day with rice, balls of rice. In that we call, if you directly translate it, it's called rice power," she explains. With a deep admiration for her culture and community that constantly stimulates her, Choi remains grounded even when an idea sweeps her off her feet. "I think it is really important now, especially that many Asian-American artists are getting attention and just taking up space. We never really had that in the art world."

In celebration of her spectacular show at Harper's, that has come to an end, Choi's immediate consists of days off turning into long nights in the studio, preparing for new shows, and works exploring itches she's more than excited to scratch. On view at Jeffrey Deitch, coming to Los Angeles in September, Wonder Woman is a group show bringing together Asian artists, but most importantly, friends, a cross-pollination of creativity. As days and weeks seem to go by faster than ever, take some time, sit back, and get lost in the universe that is HyeGyeong Choi's art.