Momin Choi Korea, b. 1985

Momin Choi takes as the subjects of his paintings and drawings places he has experienced firsthand and scenes encountered within them. Streets, objects, and interior spaces form the starting points for compositions populated by figures engaged in repetitive, seemingly purposeless actions. Often representing a young person of his own generation, these figures function as a form of self-portraiture through which Choi considers the position of the individual within society. By turning to the life of the individual as a subject, he has come to examine how personal experience can acquire political meaning within a broader social context, allowing autobiographical elements to emerge naturally within his practice.

His work is also grounded in an ongoing inquiry into whether drawing and painting can generate themselves without being subordinated to a predetermined subject or purpose. Choi approaches the process as a form of continuous association, in which one image calls forth another, much like a word-chain game or an exchange of jokes. Drawing serves as the starting point of this process, providing a space in which fragments of thought, sensation, emotion, and questions gathered from everyday life are recorded spontaneously, revealing the artist’s attitudes and habits of living. Painting extends the immediacy and vitality of these drawings from the lived world into the language of painting itself.

Momin Choi received a BFA and an MFA from Korea National University of Arts and an MFA from the Royal College of Art. He has held solo exhibitions at Out Sight (2021) and Sansumunhwa (2019), and has participated in group exhibitions at Chapter II (2026), Kyobo Art Space (2023), Seoul National University Museum of Art (2023), Art Center White Block (2022), WESS (2022), Amado Art Space (2020), and Kumho Museum of Art (2020). He is currently in residence at the Chapter II Residency.