New Possibilities of Accidental Ideas Often Discarded

Artist Choi Ki-chang's Solo Exhibition 'For Bagatelle'

Bagatelle refers to a title given to two or three short piano pieces. It signifies a light work or piece composed as a sketch of a sudden musical idea that comes to the composer’s mind. Such accidental inspirations are often considered trivial or discarded. However, they can serve as initial starting points that expand into major works.

Artist Choi Ki-chang is holding a solo exhibition featuring spray paint works that stopped at the stage of bagatelle. The exhibition, titled "For Bagatelle," will be held from the 30th of this month to October 8th at Project Space ㅁ in Pyeongchang-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. It visualizes a reflective time weighing the significance of trivial things omnipresent in the world.

Choi has presented experimental visual language with subtle dissonance in the contemporary art world. "For Bagatelle" is an opportunity to examine the process of his work and understand his intentions. The exhibition mainly features candidate works left in his studio?preliminary waste materials mixed in disorder or possibly destined to disappear for some reason. Some even lack absolute principles to determine comparative superiority among the works.

About thirty pieces of yesterday’s canvases with blurred boundaries between center and periphery, frame and interior, positive and negative?all naturally embracing new possibilities through the cycle of bagatelle. Curator Jo Juri explained, "It is a process of rushing into a differential state, being pushed to the edges, covered by stronger presences, and elevating the discarded into works," adding, "It does not strive for meticulously manufactured harmony or officially recognized aesthetic staging." She further expressed confidence that "within the horizontal and vertical dynamics and subtle color bleeding left by the sprayed paint, we will habitually discover great beauty."

The traces of drawings filled solely with color ironically recall color field painting, monochrome painting, and a group of paintings emphasizing the performativity of brushstrokes registered in art history. These also represent a universal aesthetic still popular and supported in the art market. Curator Jo remarked, "If one does not know the process or intention, it easily looks like a deliberately pleasant painting that can be misunderstood from afar," and wondered, "Is this the all-natural black humor that artist Choi prepared?"

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.