Beyond Human-Centered Views: Speaking Through Ecological Art
Creatrip Team
a month ago
Korean-Japanese artist Choi Jae-eun (73) is holding his first solo show at Seoul Museum of Art titled “Promise,” reflecting on a 40-year career exploring ecological themes through painting, installation, video and architecture. Trained in Sogetsu ikebana (Ikebana, Japanese traditional flower arranging) in Kyoto, Choi expanded floral practice into land and installation art and has blurred boundaries between art and architecture since the 1970s. His projects include an environmental installation at Isamu Noguchi Sculpture Park, a recycled glass dome at Expo ’93, and a 2016 DMZ project ‘Dream of the Land’ installed as a suspended walkway addressing division and regeneration. A long-term work, “World Underground Project” (started 1986), buries specially made paper in soils across countries and later exhumes it to show chemically driven transformations. Recent works confront climate crisis more directly: a video documenting rising sea temperatures and bleached coral (“Warning Bell”) and seed-bombs designed to reintroduce native trees into the DMZ using drones because of landmines. Choi’s show questions anthropocentrism (human-centered worldview) and invites viewers to rethink time, ecology and our relations with land and sea in the AI era. The exhibition runs through April 5.
