JaeHoon Choi: 365 Nerve

Feeling lost is a strange sensation, and it’s exactly the feeling that comes to mind looking through JaeHoon Choi’s work. The illustrations of the Seoul-based artist, animator and director are dense, packed with almost violently expressive linework. Yet, as you move through his portfolio, you are also often surrounded by negative space. This world of contrasts translates into the things JaeHoon draws, too. In one project, pebbles, small hovering shapes and crooked signs will litter sparse images. Yet in the next, giant watering eyes, engorged features, and black, cavernous holes take up the page. When the tone takes a dark turn, you still feel lost and very much like you might have stumbled down a wrong turn.

In 365 Nerve, JaeHoon says he’s looking into his “innermost depressed self.” Functioning as a “record of recent years”, the book was created over 365 days of JaeHoon’s life. The mood shifts from foreboding to oddly peaceful throughout, but what really comes alive is JaeHoon’s ability to create almost cinematic scenes of adventure. In his comics, there is a recurring theme of people journeying through uncertain, dreamlike terrain; characters often meet at a crossroads in a deserted stretch of land or in dark inky forests. “When I was young, I lived in the country for a long time, and I think the emotion of being familiar with nature has a deep influence on my current work,” JaeHoon explains. “I think it’s good as an artist to be as honest as possible.”

The deep contrast, strong personal themes and captivating, unusual imagery, JaeHoon's publication is an emotionally-driven illustrative introspective, giving the reader an insight into the images conjured by a mind in need of healing, and we get to witness the healing process in the form of the drawings as well as they progress. I think this idea of a truly personal work helps to add more weight to an artist book, and certainly more weight to the images we are presented with. 

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/jaehoon-choi-work-illustration-210222