The Lounge

CALM - Centre d’Art La Meute invites Korean artist Yun Choi (KR, *1989) for her first solo exhibition in Switzerland. Her work has been shown on numerous occasions such as in Seoul, New York, London, Hamburg, and Buenos Aires. Her work traces collective belief and reverie that underlie absurd sociopolitical phenomena. She is interested in the hybrid time of contemporary society and it often appears as multi-body beings in her practice, manifesting the contemporary psyche. Yun Choi deals with these flows through videos and multimedia installations. The moving image plays an important role in her work, without being yet omnipresent, as in the exhibition “The Lounge” presented here. A lounge is a non-place (a space where we pass through without creating social bonds) designed for resting or waiting, but not as a destination as such. These places reflect a particular temporality. Time seems suspended by the absence of consistency. The décor is reflected in a popular idea of waiting or “resting”. Nevertheless, the majority of users pay no attention and enter this space-time where movement, from an external point of view, is distended. It’s both a screen and a distance. Like the areas where smoking is permitted. We witness a scene that is both near and far. With this idea in mind, and in relation to the architecture of CALM - Centre d’Art La Meute, the artist thought about creating two distinct, connected zones: the exhibition space, where these bodies seem frozen in time, or conversely move so fast that our eye doesn’t perceive them; and the Café du Loup, which is lively, warm and family-friendly. Two series are exhibited and designed especially for CALM - Centre d’Art La Meute: the first, with a pictorial dimension visible on the French windows of the exhibition space and on the three metal plates on the right as you enter, and the second, sculptural, composed mainly of wood and ceramics. Both began during the artist’s residency at Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie between 2021 and 2023. The choice to present these works is linked to the social and geographical location of the exhibition space. The direct interaction with the Café du Loup, the location within an eco-neighborhood and, also, Switzerland. Nature is more underlying than actually present in the artist’s work. Here, it’s the neighborhood and the country’s configuration, its landscapes, that have led Yun Choi to reveal more of this part of her work through this new production. It’s hard to say where these bodies spread across the space come from, or the nature of their actions. Young, old, from the past, from the future, human, non-human... these questions are deliberately left unanswered by the artist. Everyone is free to construct their own opinions and ideas on the subject. This series of sculptures also questions the eco-neighborhood as such. Their wood was salvaged from a backyard just before it will be concreted over for new housing on the outskirts of Amsterdam. The geography is different, but the context is similar with Plaines-du-Loup and the construction of the site we’re standing on. What about the future of these places? These bodies, as the artist calls them, are both relics of the past and unknown hybrid beings. They also bear witness to ancient myths of tree transformation. Composed of natural elements, they take on ceramic attributes and faces. The link with the earth is strong. With fire, too, linked to the creation of this material through the firing of clay. These bodies also echo animist thought and shamanism, still practiced in hybrid ways in Korea. Like ancient trees perceived as patron saints or powerful spirits, these beings also illustrate the relationship we, as humans, project onto nature. A knowledge, of which the grandmother’s face, molded from a latex mask, serves as a metaphor. Finally, there are the paintings on metal and those covering the glass doors of the exhibition space. These paintings are both abstract and, through the patterns created by the imprint of the oil paint on the surface, represent variations on the aquatic motifs and mountain peaks of traditional Korean landscapes known as Sansu [산수] (“mountain and water” in English). One of the main works Yun Choi likes to echo with its extremely popular status is “Dream Journey to the Land of Peach Blossoms” by An Gyeon [안견] in 1447. However, the artist departs from this traditional model to evoke the times in which she lives, in line with the theme of “confusion” omnipresent in her work. These motifs, which we ethnocentrically link to modern European abstract painting, also represent the spread of black fungi; formed by the mold present in Seoul’s dilapidated and popular dwellings due to the surrounding humidity. Between nostalgia and melancholy, Yun Choi undertakes a profound reflection on our visions of the ideal society, showing its cracks and afterimages, its mechanisms - in short, the other side of the coin.