U-Ram Choe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
U-Ram Choe (born 1970) is an artist based in Seoul, Korea.
U-Ram Choe's work engages a fanciful dialog of aesthetics and machinery, and explores themes of biological transformation, flight, and movement. In his recent work, large-scale metal and plastic automata materialize with such a delicacy and weightlessness that it seems to take on the shape and silhouette of an organic life form. Motors, heat and light sensitive materials add to the intricacy of Choe's kinetic sculptures.
With Choe's incorporation of scientific nomenclature into artwork titling systems, walking into the gallery space can be reminiscent of touring a prehistoric exhibit at a natural science or history museum-there are certain elements of recognition: mechanical diagrams, text descriptions of habitats, visible evidence of fins evolving into wings, and even propellers. The warm biologic livelihoods of machine-creatures become the subject in Choe's work. These dynamic forms bear emotion and have anthropological roots, despite their streamlined metallic sheen. Narratives authored by the artist complement his 3-dimensional designs and drawings.
November 2006 marked U-Ram Choe’s United States debut, as he opens a solo exhibition at bitforms gallery in New York. In late spring of 2007 work by U-Ram Choe was featured in a solo exhibition at The Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas.
Past solo exhibitions of his work have included Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan, Do Art Gallery, and Hello Art gallery both in Seoul. Choe's work also been exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, Samsung Museum, Sungkok Art Museum, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Art Basel Switzerland, the New York Armory Show, Gallery Hyundai, Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, bitforms Seoul, Art Space Hue in Seoul, Gallery ChiWoo in Goachon, the Beijing Expocenter, Seoul Olympic Art Museum, and Seoul Forest Open Air Sculpture Symposium. [1]
