Paper Poem

Jae-Eun Choi’s abstract and conceptual works, spanning a variety of mediums including sculpture, installation, photography and video, address the processes of growth and extinction that mark the cycle of life. These works, which offer a distinctive perspective on nature, explore the themes of temporality and finitude by means of trees, paper, flowers, gardens and various landscapes. A student and an assistant to Ikebana master Hiroshi Teshigahara at the Sogetsu School between 1984 and 1987, Choi studied not only the practice itself, but also the symbolic meanings and philosophy of Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement that celebrates the cyclical nature of life. During the same period, through encounters with Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik, Choi also became acquainted with the Fluxus and Minimalist movements, which inspired her to expand her work by reinterpreting the sculptural qualities of Ikebana.

"Paper Poem" belongs to a series of the same name produced by Choi between 2010 and 2016 with reference to inquiries about time, change, and the memory of a natural entity. Choi produced the collages that make up this series out of the blank pages that she collected from a stack of old books which she had found discarded outside her apartment in Berlin. Dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, these sheets of paper were worn down by exposure to light and bleached at the edges over time. The delicate transitions between the overlapping sheets of paper that come together in the “frame” evoke layers of time stacked upon each other. By inscribing the sentence “When I was a tree I left a shadow behind...” next to her collage, the artist poetically emphasises how the timeline of the tree, a natural entity, transforms into the realms of human wisdom and memory through the pages of books. The simple composition created by Choi with found papers invites the viewer to explore time and space by recalling the shadow of a tree that is no longer there.