Jung Hee Choi
Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest VII
22 August–14 September 2013
MELA Foundation Dream House
275 Church Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY
Hours: Thursday–Saturday 6pm–midnight
T 212 925 8270
Live performances: Tonecycle Base 30 Hz, 2:3:7
Saturdays 7 & 14 September, 9pm
La Monte Young, voice
Marian Zazeela, voice
Jung Hee Choi, voice
Sine wave frequencies
“I found Jung Hee Choi’s installation Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest moving and engrossing… the effect of [Choi’s] work is mesmerizing. I believe that this use of drawing with the moving light projections of her video works represents a new and original direction in art today.”
–Jon Hendricks, Silverman Fluxus Collection
MELA Foundation presents Jung Hee Choi’s Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest VII, illuminating various aspects of recent works and their relationships across different media.
Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest VII features large-scale multimedia installations including an installation version of Color (CNN), and a sound environment, Tonecycle Base 30 Hz, 2:3:7 Vocal Version with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and Jung Hee Choi improvising over the implied tonic that is imperceptibly changing. The relationship of the improvisations to the drone continuously elaborates the musical meaning of the pitch. This synthesis of expression collectively creates an intersubjective space as a unified continuum emphasizing the totality of sense perceptions as a single unit to create a state of immersion. This exhibition premieres the installation works Composition 2013 #1 and Composition 2013 #2 created with Light Point Drawings on black wrap with video. The drawings are viewed as indiscernibly moving light from video projection glowing through the pinholes creating abstract and analogous representation of Manifest Unmanifest.
Curators of the exhibition Young and Zazeela wrote regarding Choi’s Light Point drawings, “With the application of her drawing techniques to a new, self-invented medium, that of inscribing with pinholes on black wrap, and with the utilization of video-projected colored light not on the drawing but, as it were, through the drawing, Jung Hee has created a profoundly engrossing body of work in these installations. Although these works can be described and even photographed, they must ultimately be experienced by the viewer in order to fully incorporate the element of time, which has now become an even more central and intrinsic aspect of these works. The varying colored light from pre-recorded videos projected through her needle point patterns continually delineates an ever-changing array, displaying facets of the curvilinear cosmos she has portrayed with endless imagination.”
About Jung Hee Choi
Utilizing traditional and experimental techniques, Jung Hee Choi has worked in a variety of media presenting series of environmental compositions involving the concept of “Manifest, Unmanifest” created with video, drawing, incense, performance, and sound. Choi’s work has been presented in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including MELA Foundation and Guggenheim Museum Dream Houses, NYC; Frac Franche-Comté, France; Berliner Festspiele, Germany; FRESH Festival, Bangkok; and the 8th Korea Experimental Arts Festival. Commissioned by MELA Foundation, her video sound performance and installation RICE, set in Zazeela’s Imagic Light environment, was chosen as one of The 10 Best of 2003 in the December issue of Artforum.
In 1999, Choi became a disciple of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela in the study of music and art, with the classical Kirana tradition gandha bandh red-thread ceremony in 2003. In 2002, with Young and Zazeela she became a founding member of The Just Alap Raga Ensemble and has performed as vocalist in every concert, including the MELA Dream House, 2009 Yoko Ono Courage Award Ceremony, Merce Cunningham Memorial, and MaerzMusik Festival.
Choi graduated summa cum laude from NYU. She received The Experimental Television Center’s Finishing Funds 2006 award. Choi’s in-depth interview is featured in the online Asian Contemporary Art Week presentations organized by Asia Society, New York. Choi appeared as guest artist and lecturer at the School of Visual Art, New York, and École supérieure d’art de Mulhouse, France. Her work is in the collection of Frac Franche-Comté, France.
