BIO - NAMWON CHOI

Bio
Namwon Choi (b. 1976, Seoul, South Korea) is an artist based in Atlanta, GA. Choi is a painter who uses photorealist techniques with vernacular abstraction to demonstrate that emotional content and careful technique can exist within the same paintings. For the past 10 years Choi has made depictions of highways and skies in acrylic and gouache paintings on shaped panels. These paintings begin with iPhone dashboard images painted in blue monochrome, but often end with layers of abstract shapes informed by highway road signs. Most recently, Choi was a 2024 Working Artist Project recipient which culminated with her solo exhibition, titled 248 Miles, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, GA in Atlanta, GA. 248 Miles was featured in Hyperallergic magazine’s list of “can’t miss” events during the 2024 Atlanta Art Week. The exhibition was reviewed by both ArtsAtl and Burnaway magazines.
The exhibition catalog for Choi’s 248 Miles will be published in early 2025 and will be the first bilingual exhibition catalog in MOCA GA’s history.

Choi’s art training began at age 5 under the tutelage of her artist father, which led to her attending Kyawon High School of Arts in Seoul. There she learned classical drawing from the performance artist Neung Kyung Sung. Following that, Choi studied at Hongik University in Seoul from 1995 to 2001 where she earned both a BFA and an MFA in Oriental Painting. While Choi benefited from her early years in Seoul, she moved to the United States in 2002 to expand her art education and connect with the American art world. In 2014 she completed an MFA in Drawing & Painting from Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA.

In 2021 Choi’s solo exhibition Dot Dot Dot at THE END Project Space in Atlanta, GA was reviewed by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. In 2022 she had solo exhibitions at the Moss Art Center at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA and at Laney Contemporary in Savannah, GA. In 2023 Choi was one of five artists included in New Worlds: Georgia Women to Watch at Atlanta Contemporary, organized by the Georgia Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Choi’s work has been exhibited in the Korean Cultural Centers in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C., where her work was reviewed by the Washington Post. In December 2023 her work was featured in the Laney Contemporary booth at the Untitled art fair in Miami, FL. In March 2024, Choi was included in a group exhibition called Wallflowers at Greene House Gallery in Brooklyn, NY that was reviewed in Whitehot magazine. In March 2025, Choi will have her first solo exhibition at Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia’s Old City district.

Choi has two children in Marietta, GA and she is currently an Assistant Professor in Painting & Drawing in the Department of Art & Design at Augusta University in Augusta, GA.