APT 1_LCD Video Installation_00:03:00_2008

At first viewing Sunghoon Choi's exhibition titled APT, one is immediately seduced by its visual presence and ontological idiosyncrasy. The corpus consists of a series of video works on LCD screens of various sizes. Medium size monitors around 20 inches give way to a smaller format including ones that can rest on the palm of one's hand. There is even a work that incorporates a magnifying glass in order to view it. What at first may seem like a gratuitous presentation, that is, a manner of experiencing video by way of a convex lens, the works nonetheless raise many interesting questions? One such point of investigation is the subject matter of APT. Though most of the video works are thematically similar yet concomitantly varied, they are linked via their presentation: for what is being played on the various sized screens are evening cityscapes of apartment buildings from which one sees through their windows individuals carrying-on with their lives: conversing with each other, reading a book, watching television and so forth. There are also other works including one that is akin to some visual med itation on a fireworks display. The nocturnal vistas of residential spaces and the exuberant, polychromatic explosions are formally and conceptually conjoined by what separates the LCD m onitors and the world outside of it: the screen.

APT 1_LCD Video Installation_00:03:00_2008

APT 4_LCD Video Installation_00:03:00_2008

There is thus a dialectic that Choi masterfully manipulates that at first is not discernible. In regards to the works that focus on the apartment dwellers there are dichotomies that are used a s narrative points of departure including inside/outside, private/public space, microcosm/macrocosm, as well as the role of the spectator to that which is being seen. On the one hand, the works trope with finesse and aplomb Alfred Hitchcock's iconic and psychoanalytically charged Rear Window and its attendant voyeuristic subtext. The asymmetry of power relations between viewer as subject and what is viewed as object, is not fully evident until one experiences the video that requires the magnifying glass. A s the viewer towers over humans analogous to an overlord of a Lilliputian world, domination by the optical is reminiscent of Jeremy Bentham's infamous penal institution known as the panopticon. The panopticon was an ideal and economic ally viable form of imprisonment. Inmates were housed in illuminated cells configured in a circular fashion. In the middle of all this circumference of misery was positioned the watch tower that was always in the shadows and never illuminated. This imprisonment strategy kept inmates under control since they could never tell when they were being watched. Choi's video works of apartments underscore the problematic of the gaze. However, like any work of art there is more here than meets the eye.

Pix Cell-Fire_LCD Video Installation_00:03:37_2009

Pix Cell_LCD Video Installation_00:04:00_2009

Pix Cell-Mime(PSP)_PSP Video Installation_00:02:20_2009

BY Raul Zamudio

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Choi, Sung hoon
1224hoon@hanmail.net

EDUCATION

2006 New media, theory and art of Contemporary art, University PARIS 8,
       Maitrise Paris , France (M.F.A.)
2004 Fine Art, Ecole Superieure des Arts decoratifs de Strasbourg (D.N.S.E.P) Strasbourg , France (M.F.A.)
2002 Fine Art, Ecole Superieure d' art de Mulhouse (D.N.A.P) Mulhouse , France (B.F.A.)
1997 The University of Suwon (B.F.A.)

SOLO EXHIBITION

2009 A. P. T ./ Brain Factory / Seoul , Korea
2003 Sound of Animal / Adeas Gallery, Strasbourg , France

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION

2008 LAYER ONE / Bieum Cultural space / Ansan, Seoul
2008 The Alliance / &nbsp gallery/ Paris , France
2007 Transparence / <Korean Cultural Center>in France / Paris , France
2007 Particules Libres (Libertarians)/ Cite Internationale des arts / Sponsored by In France<Korean Cultural Center>, New Generation Artists Exhibition in Europe/ Paris , France
2007 Space World gallery / New York , U.S.A.
2006 Le Comissariat / Paris , France
2006 Fortress / &nbsp gallery / Paris , France
2006 New Art Valley Project / Korean International Modern Art Museum in Youngwal / Youngwal , Korea
2006 IS SUE / Pitch gallery, Paris , France
2006 Mobile Studio Association, SOFIA / Sophia , Bulgaria
2006 ANIMALIA / &nbsp gallery, Paris , France
2005 INCUBAZIONE II / Projected by Franco Vaccari and Vladimir Skoda, Rubiera , Italy
2005 Four Sculptors Exhibition / Syndicat potentiel, Strasbourg , France
2004 Three Artists Exhibition/ Bedienungsanleitung / Tivoli Kulturzentrum Berlin , Berlin
2004 La Chaufferie de Descartes / Projected by Franco Vaccari, Strasbourg- La Chaufferie, France
2003 New Creation (Jeune Creation) / Schiltigheim, Alsace , France