Curatorial Statement
Exhibition Posted Online: Monday, June 6, 2022 at 10 am MT
Soojin Choi was born and raised in South Korea, and she has worked as an artist in the United States since 2010. Soojin earned her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 with a double major in Craft/ Material Studies and Painting/ Printmaking. She continued her studies at Alfred University to pursue a MFA degree in ceramics in 2018. After graduate school, she accepted a residency at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN with funding by Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship, and a long-term resident artist at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT. Currently, she is a long-term resident artist at Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT. Her work transforms objects, figures and spaces into visual language by repeatedly layering flat and spatial surfaces.
My experience is often embodied by the in-between—in-between complex emotions, in-between cultural expectations, and in-between individual interior and the interactive exterior. Living in two different conscious realities simultaneously reveals the confrontation, which exists by the interaction of two or more. I create this moment between two figures to cast ephemeral emotion and to penetrate the internal journey. To bring others into this unresolved, liminal space, I create between media by building flat and spatial surfaces with clay to direct the space surrounding the sculpture. Applying loose brushstrokes of colored slip connects these surfaces together and layers to elicit the fleeting moments of opposing experiences. The figures I portray express various emotions in their physical gestures and their subtle facial expressions. The whole complexity of their experience can be felt by a person interacting with them from different angles, as these expressions and gestures move and morph from each new perspective. In joining the unsettled experience of the figures, one can empathize with this in-between notion. By existing between named complexities, one actually becomes closer to each emotion, and gains greater insight into what it means to be human.
-Soojin Choi