Choi Jung-hyuk

Choi Jung-hyuk studied Western painting at Sangmyung University and its graduate school. Beginning with the Grand Prize at the 2003 UN World Peace Art Competition and a prize at the Danwon Art Competition, Choi has held some thirty solo and group exhibitions since 2004 and has been well received at art fairs such as KCAF, KIAF and MANIF. For over ten years Choi has been a mid-career artist whose work expresses “Natural-Topia,” a reality within illusion. Ripe, plump apples hang amid softly piled snow; green leaves and apple blossoms in full bloom make the apples look all the redder. The smooth crimson apples catch the eye, while the casually handled background gives a sense of space as if seen through a camera, shifting the viewer’s sense of space and time. Born of meticulous brushwork, the dazzlingly bright colors and the apples’ lush red and firm texture feel more natural than real apples, to the point that real apples seem fake. Choi’s hyperrealist technique arises from the subtle relationship between emphasis and omission of real objects, and presents a playful transcendence, by no means light, of the unreal, surreal and super-real born of association and imagination.