Mad Tea Party
Review Text for Choi Juwon's Solo Exhibition Pity Forty Party

December 6–29, 2019, Show and Tell (Review)

Creating a smooth vector object in a digital environment is something that can be accomplished with just a few clicks. But to give it an uneven surface—to make it irregular—requires a turn toward the realm of manual labor, a strenuous and time-consuming process. Conversely, rough, bumpy surfaces are what we usually encounter in most “real” textures produced by hand. We have all experienced moments of irritation when something that ought to be neat and clean turns out uneven instead: when a wall-mounted appliance still feels unstable even after being fixed with screws, prompting us to seal the edges with silicone; or when a corrected piece of text printed on a sticker slightly differs in scale or background color from the original, producing a subtle but nagging sense of dissonance. To make something perfectly smooth—to leave no trace—demands a great deal of effort.

In one world, creating a surface that mimics natural irregularity signals technical mastery; in another, achieving absolute smoothness does. What counts as “appropriate” technique, then, is always relative, its meaning never fixed in one place. Much like how terms such as “fast” or “slow,” “bright” or “dark,” do not describe stable states but relational conditions. Perhaps meaning itself, like the seasons or the calendar, is something cyclical. What happens if we apply this idea to our emotional lives?

Some years ago, the artist wrote: “The more intensely happiness is felt, the stronger the sense of lack becomes. Perhaps that’s because we want it to last.” What is happiness? Is it the endurance required to hold on to the promise that things will get better? Or the sense of possession that comes from finally having something we believe to be ours? What do we actually do in order to make happiness last? Setting aside a few unhealthy habits we pursue in moments of imagined happiness, we might realize that genuinely joyful states are surprisingly rare. Perhaps happiness is something that can only be identified in retrospect—an airy promise drifting somewhere between what has not yet arrived and what has already passed. That “later” is a state meticulously smoothed down, like a surface sanded endlessly until every burr is gone.

Pity Forty Party brings forth, once again, that postponed “later”—the one we nearly put off—by borrowing the softest and most cushioned form of celebration available. Yet this is not the kind of extravagant feast seen in Alice in Wonderland’s mad tea party, where unbirthdays are celebrated with reckless abundance. Instead, it is a restrained and frugal gathering, governed by a sense of austerity. As is often the case, this sensibility is closely tied to questions of space and scale.

Take, for instance, Here to Make Up the Numbers, placed near the entrance. Its thick body is topped with delicate enoki mushrooms—an odd mismatch. Unlike the colorful toadstools that evoke instant fantasy, enoki mushrooms are the kind one encounters in humble everyday dishes, valued for their ability to quietly fill a meal. Only when bundled together do they become countable. One might see this bundle as a promise deferred, or a pledge toward a happiness yet to arrive. The small sculptures scattered throughout Pity Forty Party resemble petit fours—bite-sized, decorative confections that tease the appetite before the main course arrives. A “round stamp that leaves square marks,” the “world’s largest earwax,” or a miniature gravestone engraved with the words “Save the Crab”—each functions as a fragment of deferred fulfillment. The main dish itself remains a fantasy, something that sustains us by virtue of not yet being served. In this sense, the exhibition reminds us of Lauren Berlant’s notion of “cruel optimism”: attachments that help us survive, even as they bind us to conditions that hinder us. When that attachment takes the form of a process rather than a final outcome, it becomes not purely destructive but strangely sustaining. After all, eating is safer than believing.

Throughout the exhibition space, giraffe figures appear—standing or hanging—imbued with a ghostly presence. In Just a Giraffe, the animal fades as it descends toward the canvas’s lower edge, like a memorial portrait. In Big Giraffe, its head disappears behind the ceiling structure, making the body feel oddly truncated. The giraffe, incidentally, is also a nickname once given to the artist by peers upon turning forty—though not entirely without irony. Too tall, too quiet, the giraffe seems ill-suited to sit comfortably within the gallery space. For those over forty, after all, eligibility for Seoul Foundation for the Arts’ “First Artist Support” no longer applies. At the entrance hangs Youth Does Not Return, engraved with a line from Tao Yuanming meaning “youth never comes again.” What appears to be wood is actually cake; what looks like frosting is plaster. Alongside Save the Crab, these works echo the form of Korean commemorative plaques erected by state-led moral campaigns of the past, such as the “Live Righteously” movement—slogans that once equated virtue with speed and forward motion. To live rightly was to move quickly, without detour.

Against this backdrop, the peculiar structure of Cake For demands attention. Designed like a cake whose center has been hollowed into a vertical tunnel, it resembles a tower one must climb from the inside. Two drawings accompany it: one depicts figures tunneling inward like miners; the other shows them celebrating atop the cake, illuminated by candlelight. When viewers recognize the first image as referencing coal miners, they enter the interpretive frame the artist has prepared. The act of excavation—digging inward rather than upward—contrasts sharply with the celebratory ascent. Here, progress is not measured by height but by the paradox of consuming what one inhabits. The speed implied by this structure is not linear but recursive.

Nearby, Dancer spins slowly, tilted, wearing down its wheels as it moves. Over time, black marks accumulate on the floor, recording the object’s exhaustion. Unlike Cake For, which suggests an ironic triumph, Dancer embodies a slower, more grueling tempo—one that moves only as far as its limited energy allows. It cannot accelerate beyond itself. Its pace is not heroic but necessary. If the former piece represents a kind of “top-down excavation,” a speed that denies measurement by starting at its own endpoint, the latter insists on a lived temporality: a pace bound to fatigue, gravity, and friction.

This uneven terrain—literal and metaphorical—is where Choi situates her practice. In works like A Run Toward Lamb Skewers, people propel themselves forward together, generating energy collectively, roasting food through their own movement. Elsewhere, cakes are made of real cream; jokes inflate like polyurethane foam; and a cat’s paw (Cat Cater) gently arranges them all, leaving traces of fur behind. One can simply brush it off and eat anyway.

—January 2020