I normally post about Latine art, but today I am going to highlight a piece of Korean art to reflect my half Korean heritage!
I recently visited the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, where the bold colors and size of an installment within the Back to the Future exhibit captured my gaze. Flowers of Tomorrow (2015) by Jeonghwa Choi features bright yellow and brown sculptures of enlarged, rather ordinary looking, potted plants. Lined up in descending height order, starting tall from well above head level size and decreasing to around waist level, are thirteen realistic plants ranging from palm stems to wilting leaves, fully coated and drenched in either electric yellow or a natural dark brown hue, sprouting from fake dirt inside circular pots.
Jeonghwa Choi is a sustainable artist known for using everyday and recycled materials to construct his artwork. According to the Korean JoongAng Daily, Choi is interested in recycling and participates in tours of recycling centers in Korea. In this instance, he used plastic to represent a series of flowers. In Flowers of Tomorrow, Choi alludes to the proverb “The flowers of tomorrow are the seeds of today,” encouraging his viewers to recycle. In an interview from the Artling, Choi states that plastic bridges the relationship between humans and nature, as it was created by the sun and earth while being assembled by humans. Due to its living nature, plastic is not disposable. Choi’s technique of re-using everyday plastic to create plants, which also grow from the recycled material, promotes the natural beauty of recycling.
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