REVIEW

Jiwon Choi

Roomin’ Red, 2021, oil and acrylic on canvas, 181.1 × 181.1 cm

Allegory: The Sharp and the Smooth

Jiwon Choi

Jiwon Choi paints dolls. In fact, she paints one particular type of doll: German bisque dolls, so named because they have primarily been produced in Türingen, Germany since the 1840s. More commonly referred to as porcelain dolls, bisque dolls, or china dolls, they became quite popular as children’s toys in Germany and France between the 1860s and 1900s. Today, they are widely considered to be high-end craftworks, which are coveted by antique collectors around the world. These dolls come in many different variations, such that connoisseurs can identify the manufacturer of a given doll by the shape of the eyebrows, eyes, or lips. For example, the dolls in Choi’s paintings typically have eyes that are simply drawn onto the smooth porcelain surface, but some varieties have separate eyeballs inserted into holes for the orbit. In most cases, only the exposed parts of the dolls—such as the head, upper torso, hands, and feet—are made from porcelain, with the rest of the body sewn from cloth. Similarly, in most of Choi’s paintings, only the face or upper body of the doll are shown, thus emphasizing the blank facial expressions. Interestingly, Choi’s dolls show many subtle differences from the real dolls. For example, the pupils seem to be a bit smaller, the “flesh” has a more grayish color, and the corners of the mouth hang downward. Just like the real dolls, however, Choi’s dolls have blushing red cheeks, which are the only clue to the emotional agitation they are hiding inside.

Jiwon Choi introduced her series of doll paintings at the exhibition Cold Flame, held at ThisWeekendRoom Gallery in May 2020, featuring works that she had produced since the fall of 2019. Gently glistening in bright indoor light against a dark background, the porcelain surface of the dolls creates an impression of purity and innocence, enhanced by its soft curved reflections and hard but fragile texture. Rather than the innocent girls usually associated with children’s toys, however, Choi’s dolls represent mature women, reminiscent of statues of the Virgin Mary. Indeed, the crying face in The Crying Woman (2019) instantly recalls the epiphany of the Virgin Mary. In many of Choi’s works, the dolls look as if they are about to come to life, like a supernatural novel. Some of her dolls seem to be moving, such as the doll in Untitled (2019), which is trying to enhance her faint eyes by putting in brown contact lenses with distinct pupils. This work shows that the artist intentionally paints the dolls with dim eyes.

With their small pupils and blank expressions, Choi’s dolls seem to represent the artist’s perception of herself as a young woman in her twenties, as well as other women of her age, who are expected to behave like porcelain dolls, showing no emotion. Many of her paintings feature two or more such women, who seem to share the same emotions yet do not reveal them to anyone (least of all the viewer). This inner narrative is further elicited by the artist’s composition, often having all of the dolls face forward or to the same side. One notable exception is Indifference (2019), in which four women on the right look at a crying woman on the left. Tears pouring out from an expressionless face must represent an extraordinary emotion, yet the women never betray these emotions to the viewers, revealing them only through their mutual empathy while facing each other.

The works of Choi’s Fog of Thorns series (2021) show a large close-up of a doll’s face, bisected by the stem or branch of a plant. These plants seem to be thorny flowers or acacias, again symbolizing the intense emotions coursing through inner minds of the non-existential porcelain dolls. In Thorn Flowers and a Woman, a woman in black stands placidly before a enlarged background of beautiful red flowers and sharp thorns. In Roomin’ Red, idealized red orchids bloom next to two women wearing red, who look to the right, as if avoiding eye contact with the viewer. In Melancholia, on the other hand, the women in the foreground are backlit by a bright full moon that heightens the sense of psychological agitation. The striking use of symbolism in these recent works extends the prevailing allegory of the dolls, leading to subtle yet exciting variations. Above all, the artist’s composition, juxtaposing the realistic presence of the lovely porcelain dolls in surreal settings, maximizes the dramatic emotion, ultimately yielding unparalleled beauty.

“To portray the emotions of the present era, which are so casually consumed and discarded, Jiwon Choi seized upon the visual characteristics of a porcelain doll, an icon of beauty that will easily shatter if handled without care. Her desensitized figures show no reaction, even when standing near exploding firecrackers or walking boldly on a dark forest road. The artist did not study the manufacturing process or materiality of the porcelain dolls, because such details hold no great importance to her. The only thing that matters for her is how to portray the fundamental principle. Born from such contemplations, the smooth and shiny porcelain figures faithfully and cleverly convey the emotions of our time that she wished to express.”

– Yi Gahyeon

Jiwon Choi
b. 1996

Solo Exhibitions
2020	Cold Flame, ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul

Selected Group Exhibitions
2021	Is There Any Place For Us, ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul
	Smoke and Soup, Sangup Gallery, Seoul
2020	Fair Play!, ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul
2019	Meaningful Murmur, EMU Art Space, Seoul
	The 4th COSO New Artist Exhibition, Seoul
	Switch On, EWHA Art Pavilion, Seoul

Collections
MMCA Art Bank

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ThisWeekendRoom

Artwork Inquiry

Perhaps Somebody’s Today: About Jiwon Choi’s Paintings
Jihyung Park

It doesn’t take long to list what the artist Jiwon Choi has created thus far: dolls with shimmering textures, various expressions and clothing, and odd landscapes with objects placed all around. But why has it taken so long to turn the thoughts running through my mind as I was standing in front of these paintings into sentences? It is because the conceptual, sensual, and historical contexts behind these familiar forms are so finely embedded in layers. Thus, I’ll try knocking at the door that opens to the artist’s world by expressing the thoughts of a fragmented experience in a few words and phrases, rather than through diachronic sentences that encompass her oeuvre.

First, these words can be summarized as things that the artist avoids. Given that craft and fine art have been seemingly destined to be separated despite their mutual desire to appreciate the other, Choi’s venture leads toward a completely opposite direction of the conventions of historical recognition. The artist collects images of old ceramic dolls, a kind of handicraft, and attaches fabric patterns or natural objects to them, communicating a message of the present. The subject of ceramic dolls, their clothing, and the ornaments placed on them have long been dismissed or disregarded in painting. Handicraft, too, has been regarded as a code that indicates a specific cultural and historical identity of the times, and is believed to play a slightly different role in the context of the absoluteness of meaning rendered by a painting. However, items of both practicality and decoration—flowers, natural objects, carpets, lace, ornaments—acquire new meaning when reconfigured by an artist as the subjective icons of a painting.

Second, Choi’s artistic vision can be summed up as being between anonymous portraiture and non-portraiture. It is not easy not to ask “who” these paintings intend to depict when one encounters her work. Even if one assumes that the faces with slightly different expressions could be humans wearing masks, there are no names that could be given to any of these faces. Furthermore, when we learn that the artist painted these oddly familiar faces from her imagination rather than from a specific subject, we can no longer define such paintings as portraits. That is because we feel uneasy about including such paintings in the category of portraiture. Yet, as such objects, which are not (or cannot be) determined as someone and something, are constantly being refreshed with regards to their position between human and non-human subjects. In that sense, they are not losing their function as a reflection of the times, the same as traditional portraits. An object with a face serves as a sign that represents the sensual aspects of contemporary individuality and becomes a clue that leads viewers to imagine a narrative contained before them on canvas.

Third, there is a logic of light in malfunction. Light is a fundamental drive and prerequisite for painting, and it has long been a challenge and target of experimentation for artists. The same goes for Jiwon Choi’s artistic world as well, in which light performs multiple roles. To begin with, light acts as the key prerequisite in expressing the texture of an object’s shape. The artist has no choice but to have a light source from somewhere to reveal the sparkle, that is, the reflective light, on the surface of porcelain. Dark shade cast on surfaces and backlit colors discretely fill in the contours of a form, adding life to the objects within the frame of the canvas, thus making each one look alive. At the same time, Her works give the impression of an absence of light altogether. This can be attributed to the texture of the two-dimensional surface shown on canvas, motifs, and patterns of the conspicuous clothing on the dolls, which gives no clues for the viewer to imagine the flat back views of the dolls with three-dimensional front views. Accordingly, the artist’s paintings give off an otherworldly air, as if the images of different dimensions were reconstructed as a collage. This effect is deemed to be the result of the painter’s creative process during which she cuts parts of photos collected by digital tools such as Photoshop and rearranges them on the imagined site of a finished painting. Yet, whether such a displaced feeling is intentional or not, the unnaturalness caused by the mixture of light and shade plays a pivotal role in determining the texture and ambience of the entire painting. The sight of an object strangely linked to the axis of somewhat unstable lighting results in discomfort and tension for the viewer.

Fourth, there are symbols that represent the present. Jiwon Choi’s artworks contain many references from art history. They particularly remind of the meaning of the vanitas painting, produced in sixteenth and seventeenth century Flanders, which granted symbolic meaning to ordinary objects. The vanitas painting was a methodological attempt to use still life objects to reveal the empty and limited vanities of humanity. In Choi’s work, likewise, inanimate objects and artificial symbols are used to reveal the insensibilities and isolation that have permeated our contemporary lives. These objects and symbols include porcelain dolls, closed rooms, the moon, and a spine flower. Seemingly feeble things hesitate to actively respond to the hectic current and endless stimuli of the times. However, the gazes that peek out of the frames still long for a connection to the world, as they convey an understanding of us who share the same space and time.

Fifth, there are intrinsic risks and hollow desires. Tributaries of sensitivity, rendered from the contours created by the artist, remain ambivalent. Above all, the soft sheen of porcelain reflects the desire to reveal a fancy bright side of the self. As digital interfaces are treated as identical to reality these days, our daily activities get varnished and uploaded selectively. Yet at the same time, such sleekness penetrates the fragile properties of porcelain which easily cracks by even the most minor shock due to its hollow property. Fragments of empty desire are not free from the external gaze as danger is inherent everywhere and empty desire manifests itself on top of unstable emotions. In Choi’s work, an external force beyond control is condensed into a specific scene—when expressionless dolls are threatened by force, they are neither frightened nor do they flinch—they simply remain still. However, the viewer can indistinctly sense that these individual objects have their own ineffable desire inside, which prevents the viewer from walking away with a pessimistic outlook.

There is a problem that still remains unresolved, which is how these symbols will continue to tell their own stories. She chose the medium of ceramics and dramatized landscapes to project contemporary social desires. Dolls that represent human sensibilities and autonomy make a sudden appearance in her paintings. The artist attempts to extend the limitations of narrative by inserting objects into arbitrarily created scenes or by confronting the viewer with continuously changing faces. In Choi’s artistic world, forces with opposing elements—human and non-human, natural and artificial, subject and object, day and night, individual and community, and isolation and unity—continue to pull at each other, thus creating a kind of rhythm in which Jiwon Choi reveals a glimpse of the reality we now face.