Jaeeun Choi
Horizon of the Unanswered
November 2 – December 14, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 2, 17:00-19:00
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12:00-19:00 (Closed on Mon, Sun, Public holidays)
*During Art Week Tokyo, November 7-10, open daily 10:00-19:00 including Sunday November 10
Press Release
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MISA SHIN GALLERY is pleased to present Horizon of the Unanswered, an exhibition by Jaeeun Choi, from November 2 to December 14, 2024.
Jaeeun Choi’s White Death, exhibited last year at Ginza Maison Hermès, incorporated a large number of white stones—dead coral. This powerful expression of an environment in crisis left a stark impression on all who saw it. She now takes that observation further, exhibiting works on a theme of the sea, the source of all life.
Ten photographic works arrayed on one of the gallery walls consist of detailed portraits of coral accompanied by short texts extracted from Meditation XVII, a prose piece by seventeenth century English poet and cleric John Donne. Together, they are titled For whom the bell tolls.
On another wall, a monitor screens video of a black sea, overlaid with real-time data of sea surface temperatures from seas around the world. This predominantly black video work, Glas, provides an unemotional depiction of the phenomenon whereby rising sea temperatures lead to the death and bleaching of corals, quietly alerting us to catastrophe in the sea that is the source of all life.
Glas, 2024, video 8 min
Donne reminds us that when we hear the tolling of the bell that announces a death, it is actually the listener’s own death that it marks. Every phenomenon that occurs in our world concerns us, and the sound of a bell notifying loss of life due to illness or war can be taken as notice of our own death. The tolling bell seems to resound among the quietly dying coral in the dark sea.
Jaeeun Choi
In 1976, she moved to Japan where she studied the Sogetsu style of ikebana. She worked as an assistant to Hiroshi Teshigahara, the third generation master of the Sogetsu school. In 1986, she presented an installation “Earth” at “Heaven” designed by Isamu Noguchi, Sogetsu Plaza Garden, Tokyo. From then onward, she has been producing artwork around the themes of life cycles and time. She has participated in a number of international art exhibitions such as the 1991 São Paolo Biennal, the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 where she represented Japan, and the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Ongoing projects are “World Underground Project” (1986-), “Dreaming Earth Project” in the Demilitarized Sone (DMZ) on the Korean Peninsula (2014-) and “Nature Rules” (2020-). Solo exhibitions include “Lucy and Her Time” at the Samsung Gallery (Seoul, 2007), “Forests of Aśoka” at the Hara Museum (Tokyo, 2010), “The house that continuously circulates” at the National Gallery (Prague, 2014) , and “The Nature Rules: Dreaming of Earth Project” at Hara Museum (Tokyo, 2019), “La Vita Nuova” at Ginza Maison Hermès (Tokyo, 2023). Currently she participates in a group exhibition “Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists” at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporaru Art, Korea.