Image of a Healthy Primitiveness - Oh, Young Sik Art critic

The value pursued by Choi Woolga's works belong to a spiritual primitivism.

The evidences are planar development of the canvas not following the rule of perspective, simple forms like signs, quite crude expressions, primitive emotion evoked from contrast and harmony of almost primary colors, indifferential forms harmonized to sympathize with each other. All these are the products of primitivism.

Accordingly, his canvas seems to be distanced from the unhumanized situation of the desolate civilization or the miscellaneous experiences of daily life. Rather, his paintings show a volition to depart from today's situations to unfold the aboriginal world of human nature. Therefore, his eyes are introspective to find a territory of human nature, and in this process, he shapes and expresses his pure experiences not contaminated.

So, the forms and color tones emerging on his canvas are the messengers of life to contain a healthy primitivism of inner mind.

Bright and clear primary color planes and seemingly crude line drawings conduce to deliver the energy of vigorous life inherent in the mankind before civilization. And unknown flowers, men, trees, insects and animals, and sometimes the stars in the blue sky are woven like a pattern of totem to evoke an aboriginal image of human spirit.

Lately, his canvas has been showing the spots like constellations, while the dark blue color tone like a mysterious night sky has been increasing.

He seems to sense the cool spirit to embrace a transcendent world of higher and wider mind.

Truly, saints have said that the real world of human nature is wider and deeper than the universe and therefore too infinite and mysterious to be expressed.

Once he left his urban life to live in a rural area to smell the grass and get long with the nature. Probably, his experiences at that time provided him with a momentum to search for the nature of human mind.

Hence, his past life course is like a wayfarer's journey towards a home of his mind.

And his works may be equal to the various news heard on the way home.

At any rate, upon reviewing his canvas, we can trace back to our past, being innocent enough to have the experience of feeling the primitive objects and listening to the stories thereof.