Choi Dong-yeol's solo exhibition 'The Will to Laugh: Sunflowers and Footsteps' held at Kwanhoon Gallery

The solo exhibition of veteran expressionist artist Choi Dong-yeol, titled “The Will to Laugh: Sunflowers and Footsteps,” will be held at the Kwanhoon Gallery from January 3 to February 28. This solo exhibition of Choi Dong-yeol will showcase his 50-year career and his new sunflower series.

 ‘Sunflowers in Yellow’, Oil on Linen, 160.2x130.3cm, 2024

The newly unveiled sunflower series is a reinterpretation of his sunflower series, and expresses the artist’s will to live, which faced countless variables in life and eventually sublimated them into laughter, through thick branches and flower buds. This series, which is more simplified and powerful than his previous works, is also the artist’s message to those who must once again face historical challenges today.

Choi Dong-yeol’s representative series, the Himalaya, Poppy, and New York series, will also be exhibited. Through this, you can see the artist’s 50-year life trajectory, which has traveled between the United States, Korea, and the Himalayas, and the journey of expressionism represented by the artist’s unique “will to laugh.”

'Sunflowers in Cobalt blue with a Red vase’, Oil on Linen, 160.2x130.3cm, 2024.

Born in 1951, veteran artist Dong-yeol Choi (CEO of Wave Eye) moved to the United States in the 1970s and debuted as an artist in New York, where he gained attention for his expressionist style. Starting with his solo exhibition in Korea as an invited artist in the 1980s, he brought a wind of expressionism to the Korean art world. Since the 2000s, he has climbed the Himalayas himself and worked on the Himalayan series, and recently completed the Sunflower series. His works are housed in the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Samsung Leeum Museum of Art, Daelim Museum of Art, Daejeon Expo, and other locations.

About Wave Eye

Wave Eye is an overseas art agent that has held exhibitions of prominent contemporary artists in Korea and Asia, focusing on the New York East Village Art Scene. East Village Art is an art movement that emerged in the 1980s in New York’s East Village, encompassing graffiti art inspired by hip-hop culture and various forms of art that express freedom and resistance against neoliberalism. Starting with the ‘East Village New York: Vulnerable and Extreme’ exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Art in 2018, the exhibition ‘ELEMENTS of STYLE: New York City Street Culture in the 1980s’ was held at the Seoul Forest Art Center, and ‘The Beat Goes On: Urban Art from East Village NY to SW China’, which encompassed street art from New York and China, was held at MayPark Gallery in Chengdu, China and One East Artcenter in Shanghai. In addition, a project is underway to introduce prominent overseas artists and works that have not yet been introduced in Korea through domestic art museums and galleries. Through these projects, Wave-Eye is creating a breath of fresh air in the domestic and Asian art worlds and serving as a bridgehead for the international art network. Wave-Eye is currently working on transferring the alternative message and innovation of East Village art to NFT. In addition, in 2021, we jointly developed and operated the NFT platform ‘RealCollcetion’ with blockchain company IBCT, and are currently developing the NFT platform ‘OrangeHare’ through strategic cooperation with Korea Electronic Certification, the number one company in the domestic electronic certification field, from the planning stage.