Two Breaths: Ji Oh Choi and Chuni Park Woonjoong Gallery cordially invites you to the sixth edition of Companionship, our ongoing two-person exhibition series exploring the depth of human relationships through art. This iteration brings together Ji Oh Choi and Chuni Park. Having shared their journeys in both life and art for more than thirty years, the two artists have served as each other’s most discerning critics and deepest sources of inspiration. Beginning as kindred spirits who profoundly understood one another (知己之友) and enduring together the arduous path of artistic creation, these two painter-companions have come to occupy a significant position among the established generation supporting the landscape of contemporary Korean painting. Through Two Breaths, the exhibition introduces the artistic values the two artists have long shared, alongside the distinct variations each has cultivated through an individual practice. Ji Oh Choi is a pioneering artist who has established a distinctive Korean aesthetic rooted in a family lineage of calligraphers and formal training in traditional Korean painting, while continuously expanding the boundaries of artistic media—from ceramics, furniture, and animation to 3D stereoscopic imagery and artificial intelligence. Moving beyond a human-centered perspective, the artist depicts the universe and the dignity of life embedded in the small and ordinary beings encountered in everyday spaces and along the road. The recurring image of the fried egg, carrying memories of the artist’s mother; ribbons symbolizing the self; and natural objects that offer warmth and consolation are recomposed within a single pictorial space through the surrealist strategy of dépaysement. Through the fusion of meticulous realism and the animistic sensibility of traditional Korean folk painting (minhwa), the artist has developed a distinctive mode of xieyi-inflected painting (寫意的繪畵). Within dreamlike landscapes where reality and the unconscious intersect, her works offer contemporary viewers both profound consolation and a wondrous liberation of the subconscious. Chuni Park has long explored the diverse pictorial possibilities of landscape through close observation and interpretation of nature. By combining the free and intuitive brushwork cultivated through observational sketching (sasaeng) with acrylic painting on hanji (traditional Korean paper)—a medium he has researched and experimented with for over three decades—the artist has established a highly distinctive approach to contemporary landscape painting. In particular, in order to maximize the expressive potential of traditional East Asian brushes, he has developed original contemporary jun techniques, including “Ramen jun,” “Thumbtack jun,” and “Iron-wire jun,” forging a uniquely modern painterly language. Freely traversing the boundaries between figuration and abstraction through the combination of the elaborate brushwork of East Asian painting and the planar color fields of Western modern painting, his practice encompasses both tradition and contemporaneity, offering a lucid articulation of the contemporary condition of Korean painting. Having received international acclaim through venues including a special exhibition associated with the Venice Biennale and the LA Art Show, the artist continues his rigorous journey of reinterpreting landscapes of the world through his own visual language grounded in Eastern aesthetics. This exhibition offers an opportunity to encounter the shared artistic sensibility forged through the artists’ long companionship, while also experiencing in dialogue the “two breaths” that emerge from their distinct artistic practices. More than twenty previously unexhibited new works by Ji Oh Choi, together with five densely layered paintings by Chuni Park, resonate together to create a deeply immersive experience. At Woonjoong Gallery, nestled amid graceful mountain ridges veiled in clouds, visitors are invited to encounter the richly individual artistic worlds shaped through the extraordinary companionship of these two artists.