Kinross: Modern Typography (1992, 2004, 2009), solo show by Min Choi
Gallery Factory, Seoul
March 13 – April 5, 2009
Statement: «This is the first solo exhibition of Min Choi, who has been working with Sulki Choi as a graphic design partnership Sulki & Min. For him, this exhibition is an unusual opportunity to look back at where he started: typography and its history.
For the last fourteen years, Min Choi has maintained an obsessive relationship with a book: Modern typography: an essay in critical history by Robin Kinross (first edition 1992, second edition 2004). Since he first started to translate the text in the summer of 1995, he has produced more than five different translations, as well as over twenty designs for the imaginary Korean edition of the book. Now that the actual Korean edition is to be published by Sulki & Min’s own Specter Press, this exhibition is to celebrate the realization on one hand, and extend the translation in a different form on the other. Or rather, Min Choi wants to suspend the finalization of what has become a part of his life.
The work in the exhibition attempts to show what cannot be shown in the published book. Min Choi is particularly interested in the “Examples” reproduced in the publication. The series Kinross, Modern typography, Korea edn., chapter 14, “Examples” applies the process of translation to the images: it wants to “read” them, as well as see them, by showing the reproduced artifacts in real size, and even by translating the text in the artifacts. Two small publications, Kinross,Modern typography, first edn., chapter 12, “Modernity and modernism” and Kinross,Modern typography, first edn., chapter 13, “Examples” are Korean translation of the chapters, which had been completely revised by the author in the second English edition, so had not been made available in the Korean edition that was based on the second English edition.
In this way, Kinross, Modern typography (1992, 2004, 2009) is an exhibition about typography and its history, as well as the conceptual process of translation and the relationship between the image and the text.»
