Jung Hee Choi
Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest XI
August 17–October 14, 2017
Opening: August 17–18, 2pm (24 hours continuous)
MELA Foundation Dream House
275 Church Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY
Hours: Wednesday–Saturday 2pm–midnight
T 212 219 3019
T 646 613 8328
Live performance: Jung Hee Choi
Tonecycle for Blues Base 30 Hz, 2:3:7 Ensemble Version with 4:3 and 7:6
September 30, October 6 and October 14
The Sundara All-Star Band: La Monte Young, voice / Marian Zazeela, voice / Jung Hee Choi, voice / Jon Catler, fretless guitar / Hansford Rowe, fretless bass / Naren Budhkar, tabla / Jung Hee Choi Tonecycle Base 30 Hz, 2:3:7 Vocal Version
MELA Foundation presents the annual exhibition of Jung Hee Choi’s Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest XI from August 17 through October 14 in the MELA Dream House.
The premiere of Choi’s new sound installation “The Tone-field: perceptible arithmetical relations in a cycle of eight Indian raga scale permutations, 17 VIII 17 – 17 X 14, New York” converts the Dream House space into an audibly perceptible number-field that orbits through eight modal scales based on the ancient raga systems of India. The 24-hour cycle of the tone-field will be recalculated daily to create a modal scale that is appropriate for the time of day corresponding to the movement of the Sun in New York.For the first time Dream House will open for a continuous 24 hours from August 17, 2pm through August 18, 2pm to experience a full 24-hour cycle of The Tone-field.
Choi writes, “In The Tone-field the space and the musical structure are concomitant where the space becomes the musical scale. The listener’s body is completely enveloped by sound and shares its dimensions with the numerical structure of the present intervallic ratios.”
Choi has presented series of environmental compositions with video, evolving light-point patterns, drawings, incense, performance and sound involving the concept of “Manifest Unmanifest.” Her synthesis of expression in these series collectively creates an intersubjective space as a unified continuum and emphasizes the totality of sense perceptions as a single unit to create a state of immersion. The New York Times wrote about Choi’s multimedia installation Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest IX, “If you give in to it while watching Ms. Choi’s hallucinatory screen, you may find yourself in an altered state of consciousness, on the verge of some ineffable, transcendental revelation.” (August 28, 2015)
Curators of the exhibition, Young and Zazeela wrote regarding Choi’s Light Point Drawings, “With the application of her drawing techniques to a new, self-invented medium, that of inscribing with pinholes on black wrap, and with the utilization of video-projected colored light not on the drawing but, as it were, through the drawing, Jung Hee has created a profoundly engrossing body of work in these installations. Although these works can be described and even photographed, they must ultimately be experienced by the viewer in order to fully incorporate the element of time, which has now become an even more central and intrinsic aspect of these works. The varying colored light from pre-recorded videos projected through her needle point patterns continually delineates an ever-changing array, displaying facets of the curvilinear cosmos she has portrayed with endless imagination.”
As part of the exhibition, three live performances of Tonecycle for Blues Base 30 Hz, 2:3:7 Ensemble Version with 4:3 and 7:6 will be performed by The Sundara All-Star Band. While traversing the common ground of improvisational phrases rooted in Indian raga, American blues techniques, Korean traditional folk ballads and musical Minimalism, this work creates a highly original sound that is based on just intervals.
About Jung Hee Choi
Jung Hee Choi, artist/musician, works in video, performance, sound and multi-media installations. Choi’s work has been presented in the US, Europe and Asia, including FRAC Franche-Comté, France; Berliner Festspiele, Germany; Dia Art Foundation, Guggenheim Museum and MELA Foundation Dream Houses, NYC; FRESH Festival, Bangkok; Korea Experimental Arts Festival, Korea. Commissioned by MELA Foundation, her video sound performance and installation, RICE, was chosen as one of “The 10 Best of 2003″ in the December Artforum. Choi is a disciple of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela in the classical Kirana vocal tradition and founded with them The Just Alap Raga Ensemble in 2002.
In 2015, the Dia Art Foundation acquired a unique version of the La Monte Young Marian Zazeela Jung Hee Choi Dia 15 VI 13 545 West 22 Street Dream House, which opened to the general public from June 13 to October 24, 2015. In this installation, Young and Choi presented for the first time their sound environments in simultaneity. Choi’s work is in the collection of Frac Franche-Comté, France and Dia Art Foundation, NYC. Choi graduated BA summa cum laude, and received her MA in art and sound from NYU.
