Choi Byung-So Korea, b. 1943

Choi Byung-So was born in Daegu in 1943 and studied Western painting at Chungang University. e lives and works in Daegu. He was one of the founding members of the Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, the first contemporary art festival in Korea. He exhibited his works in major group exhibitions held at the National Art Center, Tokyo in 1977, Bienal de Sao Paulo in 1979, and Brooklyn Museum in 1981. He is active internationally with solo exhibitions at Daegu Art Museum in 2012 and the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain Saint-Étienne Métropole in France in 2016. His works were presented for ‘Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s’ at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2023-2024.

Choi Byung-So showed avant-garde experimental arts such as conceptual installations while working as a key member of "Korean Experimental Works" in 1974 and "Daegu Contemporary Art Festival" in 1974-78. In addition, such works are in context with the current works in the sense that they constantly ask questions about existence and absence, image and substance.

In the 70s, when Choi Byung-So began to produce works using newspapers, avant-garde art that rejected conservations and forms and pursued innovation was actively developed around the world, while socially the media was controlled and expression was suppressed. For Choi Byung-So as a young man in his early 30s who was living in such an era, newspapers were the most accessible media at the time, but he started to erase newspaper articles with a ballpoint pen because he was angry at the media for not being able to control them.

Choi Byeong-So's work is to draw lines with pencils and ballpoint pens on newspapers, and then black lines cover the front and the paper is torn by friction until the physical limit is reached and the work is no longer possible. At first glance, the blackened surface on the newspaper looks the same, but the endless repetition of human labor and time due to the artist's creative will is an artistic practice, accumulating in each piece of work to give unique value to insignificant daily mass production and to make the temporary thing sustainable forever.