Minyoung Choi, born in 1989 in Seoul, is an emerging artist who lives and works in London. She was addicted to art since childhood. Meanwhile, she is obsessed with observing and imagining details that happened in daily life. Minyoung grew up under the influence of surrealism and desired to create a dream linking reality with imagination. She tries to reflect her spiritual world and life experiences, through personify objects full of human features and emotions (such as the coelacanth, an endangered species) and sunless conditions (such as blue lamplights). While looking at her paintings, audiences might have mixed feelings, such as ‘eerie yet playful’ or ‘tranquil yet uncanny’.
Various anthropoid animals are adopted as main subjects in Minyoung’s works as a new way to interpret the relationship between men and nature and even the surrounding world. Min-young's preference for animals stems from her recognition of the Buddhist doctrine -- animals are regarded as sentient beings.
In her works, animals are often placed in an open or confined scene, in a state of observing or being observed. Those settings would always evoke subtle, sympathetic emotions in the audience. For instance, audiences could similarly associate the fish swimming in the tank with the people rushing out in the cities. They all seem to be living with ease, but they do not know how constrained their condition is.
Light also plays a crucial role in her paintings and is the key to creating the mysterious and dreamy, eccentric yet poetic mood. By accentuating the light which initially belongs to the warm colour system in daily life, artworks such as moonlight (Car Park II,2019), afterglow (Car Park, 2019), and lamplights (Desk,2018) tend to become cold and grotesque. The audiences would be amazed by these slightly unreal yet believable worlds as the familiar life scenes become a little bit strange under the unique method of representing lighting.