Eotieum (엇이음) describes a condition in which misalignment functions not as rupture, but as the very structure through which relation persists. Rather than understanding relation as the achievement of unity, Eotieum proposes that relation may continue precisely where full alignment remains impossible. What does not fully meet, coincide, or converge does not necessarily produce disconnection. Instead, misalignment becomes a generative structure through which continuity is sustained.
Within this framework, continuity does not depend on coherence, and connection is not contingent upon completion. Relation may deepen without convergence and endure without arrival.
Emerging from the condition of a divided Korea, Eotieum is not a representation of division but a methodology for understanding it. Separation and proximity coexist without resolution, yet relation continues to persist through this condition. While grounded in this specific historical condition, its logic of relation extends beyond any single historical or geographic context.
Within Choi's practice, Eotieum operates across material, spatial, bodily, and temporal registers. Hanji is torn and joined. Forms approach one another without fully merging. Movement leaves traces that accumulate without completion. Shadows, trajectories, and encounters remain in motion, producing temporary structures of relation that are continuously formed and re-formed.
Eotieum does not seek resolution. It attends to what remains unfinished, displaced, or partially connected. Separation is not eliminated, and distance is not overcome. Instead, relation emerges through the ongoing negotiation between proximity and fracture, persistence and interruption.
Eotieum proposes that what remains apart may nevertheless remain connected. It is a structure through which relation continues—not despite misalignment, but through it.
Gyeokja (격자) is the visual language through which Eotieum takes form. Where Eotieum describes relation that persists without full alignment, Gyeokja translates that methodology into a relational visual structure built through deliberate misalignment.
Derived from the Korean concept of lattice, Gyeokja draws from the wooden window screens of hanok architecture, the crossed threads of patchwork, and woven partitions that allow light and air to pass while maintaining separation. Rather than reproducing these traditions, it reinterprets their relational logic as a contemporary visual language.
Built through deliberate misalignment, Gyeokja is composed of lines that cross, approach, and hold apart without ever fully converging. Its structure is not decorative but relational: each intersection marks a point where separate elements remain connected without resolving into a single, unified form.
Across Choi's installations, layered Hanji (traditional Korean paper), and digital works, Gyeokja appears through torn and rejoined paper, overlapping and interrupted lines, and forms that approach one another without merging. It is a grammar rather than a style—a visual language through which accumulation, rupture, proximity, and persistence are organized into structures that remain intentionally unresolved.