SUNG ROK CHOI

Great Chain of Being, Choi’s solo exhibition, features two animated installations. These are, Great Chain of Being, an animated work and A Dog in 12 Motions, a live-action animation. The two works featured in the exhibition display a moving landscape in an animated form, crafted from the relationship between the elements that compose the structure of the contemporary world, movement, and connectivity. The works featured in Great Chain of Being are both 2D animation installations, and they tell the tale of the relationship and circulation of the structure of the contemporary world and the elements that constitute it. The great chain of being, an ancient philosophical concept, attempted to explain the structures and relationships of the world as a form of hierarchy or set of strata. This philosophical idea is here expressed in the form of the entities that constitute the contemporary world. The philosophers of the past believed that the structure of the world had at its top a god, and that beneath there were angels, animals, plants, and elements. But this conception of the world, as a result of the changes in civilization and culture, resulted in the elements that constitute the world undergoing a transition and sustaining an unforeseen hierarchy. The works of art depict the contemporary structure in the form of robots, machines, people, animals, and virtual or digital entities. Within virtual systems, these entities undergo a process of creation, arrangement, use, disposal and recycling, through which they emerge and disappear. The work depicts the stories emerging from these processes, against the background of a systemically designed landscape akin to a factory. A Dog in 12 Motions is a 12-channel live-action animated work, which depicts an abandoned robot dog in 12 different screens. The work is based on the robotic canines that are currently under development with the use of modern robot technology, and it tells the story of an abandoned, malfunctioning robot dog, wandering the city. The wandering robot dog repeatedly demonstrates the 12 animalistic or bizarre movements that it has learned in different urban landscapes. Through this work, the artist depicts the movements of his creations as animation, and he forms a link with the process in which a robot is created, programmed, and enacts mechanical movements.