DOOSAN Gallery New York is pleased to announce an exhibition, Insatiable Appetite, by Sang-ah Choi.

This exhibition presents Choi’s latest mixed media paintings and installation, which epitomize her in-depth study and perspectives on life. She has developed her work over a decade using slick, resin-coated paintings and paper sculptures, which almost resemble a product.

Time-Square (2010), one of Choi’s latest pieces in this exhibition, was inspired by 42nd street in New York City constantly revolving day and night as if referring to our modern life, which is complicated and yet intimately all connected. The traditional symbol of longevity—sun, mountains, water, rocks, clouds, pine trees, the elixir plant, turtles, cranes, and deer—ubiquitously emerge and overlap through all her works in different stylistic forms so that the viewers might not recognize their presence at first. They are symbolized as the immortal circle of consumerism in our life, which is so deeply rooted in us that we normally do not comprehend it through the symbolism in her works.

Another omnipresent character, the romantic comic girl character with famously exaggerated big eyes, is drawn in blue, vomiting or shoveling her guts out. This girl seems to struggle with both anorexia and bulimia, which represents the very system of our society in a strange way. Only pure act and desire remains in the end, never fulfilled as the contents vanish into the very act of eating and the non-stop cycle of consuming life.

Even though Choi’s works seem overly muted with sweet colors and look so subtle and luminous, her critical view and somewhat repugnant statement about our current society seem so serious and unfathomable. She carefully envelops the limitless circle of consumption in our society in two contradictory aspects—the heaviness of the theme and the incandescent, overly polished surface of her works. The boundary between consumer and that which is consumed has become blurred in her work. Although she lays them out with attractive visual forms as a reminder, the viewer might find out that these representations are not pretty after all.

Sang-ah Choi was born in 1971, Seoul, Korea. Choi lives and work in New York City and Portland, Oregon. She received her BFA and MFA from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. And she also earned her second MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has had solo exhibitions in Sarubia Dabang, Seoul (2009); ARARIO Gallery, New York (2009), and Sandra Gering Gallery, New York (2004). Her work has included in many group exhibitions including: Center for the Book Arts, New York (2010), George Adams Gallery, New York (2010), Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China (2009); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan (2004). Choi’s works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the New York Public Library, New York; The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA and Progressive Corporation, Mayfield Village, OH.