Art Sonje Center presents 2017 Art Sonje Project #6: Hanaco, Yunyunchoi, Choi Yun Solo Exhibition from 10 October to 29 October.This show is supported by Seoul Museum of Art as part of Emerging Artists & Curators Supporting Program.
Choi Yun’s consistent interest lies mainly in the things that have been deemed banal which include (public) beautification projects, interior decorations, avocational photography, and Hallyu (the Korean wave). Although these images seem to come from the past or the future, but they are in fact contemporary by-products. They are easily spotted in our daily life but at the same time are invisible if you don’t pay attention, accordingly it produces a sensation of alienation somehow. Choi calls these images ‘media cache.’ The artist has captured, relocated, and rearranged them to delve into how images are originally employed and what the mentality and belief of individual and group users embedded in them. Hanaco, Yunyunchoi, Choi Yun Solo Exhibition continues on with these questions; it looks into the images reproduced by the artist what these images picture and where these head for through three characters from the works—“Hanaco,” “Yunyunchoi,” and “Choi Yun.”
The artist, under the name of Image Producer ‘Yunyunchoi,’ has updated fragments of the works (videos, texts, photographs, etc.) on her website. The fragments are all converted into images, stacked on top of a white background of the webpage, scorched and tangled up together. So it is not easy to determine the boundaries of the individual works as well as their respective material. Accordingly, individual elements with separate tenses come together at the website to make up a single scene. Such an approach prevails in Choi Yun’s works. In this exhibition, ‘Yunyunchoi’ is in charge of production and operation of images, throwing fragments at the gallery space as if uploading files to the webpage. Extracting components from the previous works, she has reproduced in another forms and exposes them attachable to one another at any given moment. ‘Hanaco’ is an anonymous character who is ‘not called by the real name’ and has appeared in Choi Yun’s works since 2015. In Hanaco and Mr. Kimchi etc. Playback (2016–), a single playlist which holds together various videos, a character, possibly Hanaco, keeps crossing over time and space as well as acting recklessly and beyond comprehension. For instance, Hanaco refuses to stand straight; instead she crawls, turns round and round while taking pictures, disorienting the point of the compass, exposes things that are better hidden, flings herself on the floor, and calls out to wall. The artist explains this behavior as “an act to somehow reverse the physical rigidity of maps.” The comment seems to indicate the will and confidence of the artist in carrying with the challenge even when the fixed
ideas and firm norms likened to maps would not break from her reckless attempts. Hanaco and Mr. Kimchi etc. Playback comes out to the gallery space and appears as being divided and converted into countless Hanacos and tools. ‘Hanaco,’ a faceless body from the video, is realized in various images of the reality from the encounter with ‘Yunyunchoi’ in the gallery space. The objects from the video are laid out under the title of Performance Tool and Media Cache (2017); the existing Hanaco 50 (2015) is amplified into 100 characters each with 100 printed sheets displayed on the wall. They are pointing to one another within a state where it’s possible to access to the scene, like Hanaco from the video, by following the voices echoing in the gallery space. Choi Yun does not stop there but adds several elements in the gallery space. Shoddy objects that never made it to the scenes of Hanaco and Mr. Kimchi etc. Playback such as a Pikachu doll and food models are transformed and arranged here and there as the ‘media cache’ of the show. Around them cache of the cache that is left behind as residue of data despite countless attempts of elimination, like cache files sticks and functions as the insignificant decoration of SS series (2009–2017) that mimics online videos. Likewise, a greeting robot that awakes a vague déjà-vu—hi-bot (2017)—is standing by the entrance to promote the speed of communication. Window Picture Frame (2017) and Sunflower Wallpaper (2017), as images of complete products often used as interior accessories, are attached on the walls. These elements across over the walls as repeatedly attached and detached to one another. And they are linked to the scenes beyond the glass window of the gallery, toward the streets crowded with people wearing modernized hanbok, and another scenes.
As ‘Hanaco,’ ‘Yunyunchoi,’ and ‘Choi Yun’ do not blend in together yet connect with one another somehow, the elements scattered on the exhibition floor jump between the landscapes again and again in an attempt to bridge them. In the end, the artist as a mediator interveins among several substitutes, ‘Hanaco,’ ‘Yunyunchoi,’ and ‘Choi Yun’, and yells out unrefined, multiple or anonymous voices. But why is she doing this? When it comes to ‘Hanaco,’ it is one of the most common Japanese names. But it could also be a nickname from an impressive ‘one (hana)’ ‘nose (co)’ from the face, or a name from the colonial era. The name of the many (multiple) becomes that of the hidden (anonymous), and an imposed name (fake). ‘Choi Yun’ calls upon ‘Yunyunchoi’ and with ‘Hanaco,’ presents media cache and debris that was taken for granted or forgotten. Then are all Hanacos of the world dead or alive? Countless Hanacos in fragments are endlessly transforming and tearing up the boundaries of the landscape.

* This exhibition is supported by Seoul Museum of Art as part of Emerging Artists & curators Supporting Program.