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Choe Vio's solo exhibit at Seoul's Page Gallery explores time as an interactive experience

Published: 16 Apr. 2026, 16:21 Updated: 16 Apr. 2026, 18:05

LIM JEONG-WON
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A view of painter Choe Vio's new exhibition, ″Time Interface,″ at the Page Gallery in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul [PAGE GALLERY]

Seoul-based painter Choe Vio has returned to the Page Gallery with “Time Interface,” a solo show that opened Wednesday, which attempts to turn time from an abstract idea into something viewers can actually move through, disturb and help complete.

Running through May 30 at the gallery’s west building in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul, the exhibition marks Choe’s first solo presentation in four years and centers on new paintings and an interactive installation built around the artist’s long-running interest in invisible signals, energy and duration.

The exhibition’s premise is both dense and strangely simple. Choe imagines time as not just a subject on the canvas, but a condition that structures how the work is made and how it is seen.

“This exhibition is about a point of contact in time — one where the past asks questions and the future answers them,” Choe said during a press conference at the Page Gallery on Thursday. “If the future could send something back, perhaps it would help us navigate the countless choices we make in the present.”

That approach carries into the work itself. Choe does not usually begin with thought and move toward action. Instead, he often throws paint onto the canvas first, and lets thinking follow. That instinctive, receiver-like stance has become part of his artistic language.

“I see myself less as someone inventing images than as someone picking up signals — a translator rather than a controller,” Choe said.

Artist Choe Vio [PAGE GALLERY]

At the center of the show is “137 Silent Observers,” an installation of 137 stones placed on a 137-by-137-centimeter (54 inches) aluminum plate. Visitors are asked to move one stone and leave their name, setting off a chain of changes that is recorded at 137-second intervals and later translated into video and, eventually, back into painting.

The number 137 appears repeatedly in the show, reflecting Choe’s fascination with it as a strange bridge between different systems of thought, from physics to mysticism.

Born in 1971, Choe trained under Rodney Alan Greenblat at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He previously worked as an art director and game designer before expanding into the international art scene through solo and invited exhibitions in Germany and Venice.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [[email protected]]