The Primitif Borrowing a Nouveau Expression Mode

Nouveau Primitif.

The New York artworks in the 2000s tended to escape from the overally intense paintings of Paris. Such a tendency was a starting point for me who refused the bright acryl colors in my mind.

It cannot be denied that the influence of the environment changed from Paris to New York, but it would be rather true that I felt that the identity of the European art had been lost incessantly in tradition and conservatism.

However, I cannot desert its first image.

Because the basic and primitive free EEGEEGEE expression was strongly based in my consciousness.

Hence, my earlier New York paintings feature a strong line on the paints owing to the incessant brushworks on the black background. Such expression of lines made my New York life more and more interesting for some years.

In particular, the lines I used served to express some playful game, making more painting-like images.

The signs or numbers or characters I used then served to express our contemporary people’s consciousness or the medium of the spirit swayed in the current of the age and at the same time, approach a genre of painting in a modern way.

The oil painting, which began on a full scale in a New York studio of a worn-out wooden building from the 1930s, aims to redefine the instinctive thinking inherent in the psyche of all humans seeking endless joy. In short, it is my expression of will.

The playfulness existing in my unconsciousness, escaping from pleasure, grief, loneliness, etc., would seek for another modern moralism approaching them.

Now when 5 years have passed since then, I feel interested in my line works in harmony with the thick matière of the paints with the same image but different expressive mode.

I look for my own mode of expression as well as my own materials.

It is artists’ obligation, but Picasso says “Imitating others would lead to another creation, but I will not draw another painting by referring to my own. I have kept his aphorism to the end with my work.

Jul. 09, 2004

Choi Woolga