Myung Jin Choi is a sculptor, installation artist and a storyteller. Born in Korea, she has lived in the United States for the past five years and briefly in Canada while serving as a visiting Assistant Professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She received her MFA from the State University of New York New Paltz in 2003. Choi's work mirrors her history evidencing her life's experiences and travels. Each piece she creates recalls a memory, capturing the essence and feeling of a specific time and place. Her work lacks a recognizable style other than the use of a singular form in a repetitive way. Forms can be sharp and hard-edged, rounded and soft, can be floating in space or firmly rooted, projecting out from the wall or mounded on the floor. The style she chooses to work in reflects the method best suited for the translation of her ideas.
Artist Statement:
My work is based on research that personally interests me. Scientific theories such as fractals, chaos, and complexity stimulate my curiosity and motivate my creativity. My sculptures and installations seek to express the coexistence of order and disorder in art, philosophy, and our world.
A fractal is a geometric figure in which an identical motif repeats itself on an ever-diminishing scale. It is the graphic representation of a mathematical equation in the complex plane, obtained by “iterating” the results of the equation. Chaos is the idea that it is possible to get completely random results from normal equations. Fractals are related to chaos because they are complex systems that have definite properties. A complexity is neither completely deterministic nor completely random and it exhibits both characteristics.
I was drawn to the bizarrely beautiful fractal images and perception of mathematics as a body of sterile formulas. Fractal geometry mixes art with mathematics to demonstrate that equations are more than just a collection of numbers. I approach this scientific system, encompassing visualization, repetition, sequences, relationships of text to image, and varied methods of transformation, into three-dimensional sculpture and installation work. I investigate this complex motion and the dynamics of sensitive chaotic systems in order to translate both nature’s irregular movements and my personal experiences into my work.
Conceptually, the fractal-gemotric shape that is very complex and infinitely detailed is also related to the eastern philosophy Samsara (transmigrationism). I understand this philosophy as the circle of life: The universe is a macrocosm that I am a part of on a microcosmic level. It is like the relationship between the cosmos and a human, a human and a cell. My works are characterized by a kind of built-in similarity; a motile figure, the pattern, or motif keeps repeating. I strive for a new whole that consists of an ensemble of objects or effects that work together by connecting each unit, each whole unique to the space in which it is installed. I use the fractal format as a method to create my sculptures and installations. I make work that offers psychological dialogue in the space between the work, the viewer, and myself.
My work places emphasis on psychological movement which combines nature’s order and art’s disorder or vice versa. The works that have organic movements, a variety of colors, patterns, and narrative stories will stimulate the viewer’s subconscious.
