Minseok Chi (b. 1990) works primarily with the traditional medium of Korean painting to explore connections between Korea’s traditional philosophy, shamanistic beliefs, and contemporary contexts. In particular, he studies past shamanistic practices that linked the human world with the realm of spirits through everyday elements such as stones, trees, and mountains. As a contemporary artist, he reflects on the role of the modern-day shaman—one who spiritually connects the diverse beings that inhabit today’s complex society.

Minseok Chi’s early works focused on contemporary reinterpretations of Buddhist iconography and formal structures. In his ‘Buddha of Organs’ series (2014–2016), Chi reconstructed the figures of Buddhas, heavenly beings, and other deities using anatomical imagery such as human organs.
 
Within these works, organs like the heart or lungs are seamlessly integrated into the traditional iconography of Buddhist art, creating entirely new visual compositions. By merging the sacred forms of the Buddha with the internal organs of the human body, the artist breaks down the boundaries between divine and corporeal forms—visually embodying the Buddhist philosophy that “all beings share the same essence.”

This philosophical and iconographic reinterpretation of traditional religion—along with a blurring of boundaries—continues in Minseok Chi’s ‘Buddha’ series (2015–2019). This body of work also draws on diverse Buddhist iconography; however, rather than depicting the Buddha in his traditional form, Chi places discarded objects such as Coca-Cola bottles, shoes, toothpaste tubes, wine bottles, and disposable containers in the Buddha’s place.
 
By positioning these mundane, overlooked items—often considered worthless—in the sacred space typically reserved for deities, Chi invites viewers to see these trivial objects from a renewed perspective.

Through this work, the artist declares that “everything in the world—and all of us—are Buddhas” by offering a new way of seeing and questioning the ordinary. He states, “If we look at and feel the things around us—things we pass by thinking they have no value, even trash—with the eyes of a child, with fresh eyes, then everything can become beautiful, a reason for happiness, and an object of love.”

Since 2020, Minseok Chi has moved beyond collaging everyday objects into religious iconography and begun portraying such secular items as gods themselves.
 
His portrait series ‘百八神衆道 The Way of the 108 Gods‘ (2020–2023) presents the results of his uncanny observation of the values shared by society—such as reputation or standard—stripped from things he has personally consumed: things he ate, drank, wore, rode, or saw. Drawing on the format of tanghwa (幀畵)—traditional Buddhist scroll paintings depicting Buddhas or bodhisattvas—these portraits depict globally consumed brands and products such as Mickey Mouse, YouTube, Coca-Cola, Hermès, and Visa as anthropomorphic gods.

In today’s capitalist society, commodities are often revered not merely as objects, but as if they possess supernatural powers. For instance, the act of owning a luxury item such as an Hermès product is often intended to signal one’s social status or personal value—an example of how the symbolic and social meaning of a commodity is prioritized over its practical utility. Karl Marx criticized this phenomenon as a kind of modern superstition, coining the term commodity fetishism to describe how, under capitalism, social relationships between people become obscured and are instead perceived as relationships between things.

Minseok Chi began working on ‘The Way of the 108 Gods’ by contemplating how today’s commodities—often regarded as modern-day gods—might be represented if they were literally embodied as gods. He explored how such objects, imbued with symbolic significance in the capitalist era, could be expressed through religious iconography. To do this, Chi assigned physical and human-like attributes to these symbols of contemporary capitalism, transforming them into anthropomorphic deities, and placed them within traditional religious frameworks to construct a new mythological narrative.
 
Each of the 108 gods is accompanied by a text, created by deconstructing Tao Te Ching, the foundational text of Taoist philosophy by Laozi, and recomposing it in response to the observation of 108 symbolic objects. In doing so, Chi deliberately ignored the social meanings and symbolic layers attached to these objects in contemporary culture, instead choosing to examine them with fresh eyes in order to reveal their more essential nature.

For example, when examining the American cereal brand Lucky Charms, Minseok Chi writes:
“There are countless colors and lights hidden in that rainbow. Only those who are close to the Dao can truly see them and feel their real beauty. And when one truly experiences beauty, they can live a long life.”
 
In this way, the artist dissects the appearance of each object, subverts the brand’s business model through irony, or recalls the sensory experience of consuming the product—then links these impressions to phrases from Eastern philosophy.

As suggested by the number of portraits—'108—The Way of the 108 Gods’ was, for Minseok Chi, a voluntary spiritual practice aimed at confronting the essence of each object. And this practice took on a playful, almost game-like quality. This spirit of playful ritual extended beyond portraiture and evolved into a form of traditional religious dance.
 
The religious ritual performance piece The Way of the 108 Gods Dance (2023) was staged in the symbolic frontline of capitalism: a department store. In this everyday space—where countless goods are displayed and sold, and where culture is also consumed—a dancer unfolded a bodily language of desire and longing for happiness.
 
Curator Choi Goeun describes the ritual as a moment where “the slippage between language and movement, and the dissonance between object and stage, come sharply into focus.” She adds that the awkwardness and unfamiliarity produced by this collision “becomes a key that opens a gap between reality and habitual thinking.”

In his 2023 solo exhibition 《The Way of the 108 Gods》 at Sahng-up Gallery Euljiro, Minseok Chi presented a comprehensive display of 108 portraits, scriptures, and ritual performances, transforming the exhibition into a space of religious "play." The artist envisioned the gallery not just as an altar dedicated to the 108 deities, but as a playful site where viewers could imagine and engage in new forms of play grounded in his own performative acts.

In this exhibition, the artist expanded the doctrine of ‘The Way of the 108 Gods’ beyond the visual realm into auditory and tactile experiences. The solemn flow of The Way of the 108 Gods Music (2023) and the slow, fluid movements of The Way of the 108 Gods Dance (2023) harmoniously intertwined with the 108 portraits, organically connecting to transform the exhibition space in the heart of Seoul into an unfamiliar, extraordinary place. 

Through this playful space filled with unfamiliar expressions and sounds, Minseok Chi hoped that visitors, upon returning to their daily lives, would come to view all things as objects of free observation and sources of joyful play.

The following year, Minseok Chi presented the solo exhibition 《Landscape of Eight Views of Dadaepo and Their Characters》 (Hongti Art Center, 2024), showcasing a series of character paintings that extended the concept of ‘The Way of the 108 Gods.’ In this body of work, the artist created hieroglyphic characters based on the forms of each of the 108 gods, developing them into Chinese character-like symbols.
 
Chi then intertwined these characters with the natural landscapes of Dadaepo’s “Landscape of Eight Views” (多大八景), located in Saha District, Busan, where the Hongti Art Center is situated. The works explore the dissolution of boundaries between nature and the artificial, probing possibilities for new harmonies.

In 2024, Minseok Chi’s solo exhibition 《Ritual en honor a la Diosa Coca-Cola》 at Chamber went beyond creating a one-dimensional iconography of the brand. Through the Coca-Cola Goddess, he constructed a more multidimensional and complex religious worldview unique to his practice.
 
The narrative of the Coca-Cola Goddess begins with the world burning under an infinitely expanding sun, causing everyone to lose their sight. The goddess is born from charcoal and grants a dark shadow to those who cannot see, enabling humans to observe all things and find their way. The fact that the Coca-Cola Goddess, opposing the sun, is born from charcoal—an element sharing the sun’s attributes—relates to the mythological concept of “identity fusion.”
 
This “identity fusion” in mythology reflects the rationality of myths, showing that the contradictory existence—the hated adversary—is continuously confronted and embedded within the human unconscious.

The myth of the Coca-Cola Goddess also incorporates the significant symbolic meaning of the number three, which holds an important place in mythology. The three key elements in the Coca-Cola Goddess myth—“charcoal,” “bottle,” and “legged herring”—correspond to the three-function system.
 
The dual nature of the charcoal from which the Coca-Cola Goddess was born represents divinity. The dark energy contained in the bottle, which resists the sun, symbolizes martial power. Meanwhile, the legged herring, always guarding the goddess, moves between water and land and signifies divinity like the charcoal, while also symbolizing abundance, as herrings have historically been a major food source for humans due to their vast numbers.

The Coca-Cola Goddess, who once shared her cool energy with people, sacrifices herself to block the ever-intensifying sun and ascends to the sky. She sprinkles the dark energy from her bottle into the heavens. The sun and the war deity, who once opposed the Coca-Cola Goddess, come to a new mediation and each take turns appearing in the sky once a day, thus giving birth to the night.
 
Through this myth, humanity regains its subjectivity by seeing, owning, and understanding the night.

Minseok Chi’s artistic world is not defined by a fixed order, power, or capital; rather, it is grounded in a critical awareness of a society rife with distorted values, alienation, and forgetting. Against the imbalances created by extreme value biases and capitalism, he explores the possibility of humans subjectively understanding the world through “mediation.” The recurring theme of reclaiming subjectivity in his mythological narratives aligns closely with this context.
 
For example, in the myth of the “Coca-Cola Goddess,” the ever-growing sun symbolizes the absolute power and self-contained reasoning of Western centrism and capitalism. The Coca-Cola figure, while a product of capitalism, gains a complex meaning by being recontextualized within the framework of Korean shamanism as a form of resistance.
 
Through this symbolic recontextualization, Chi overturns Western prejudices, fantasies, and savior attitudes toward Korean culture. In other words, he breaks down boundaries between tradition and modernity, East and West, capital and faith, seeking new subjectivities and cultural positions within these intersections.

Minseok Chi describes art as “a new kind of play that can break down the serious games surrounding us.” He becomes the master of a fictional play that weaves together contradictory and disparate concepts, dissolving conditions of opposition and resistance. Chi joyfully yet earnestly appropriates the vast concepts of the economic and cultural systems around him within his own interpretive framework.
 
In this way, his art proposes an alternative imagination where tradition and modernity, East and West, the sacred and the profane coexist and harmonize, prompting reflection on the essence of life and how we live.

 “I think artists are somewhat like ancient shamans. As a shaman of modern society, I create works while questioning how to spiritually connect with the various everyday beings we see in our society. These questions are then brought to life through new forms of play called art.”     (Minseok Chi, 2024 ARKO Young Artist Day Emerging Artist Portfolio Exhibition: About Artist)

Minseok Chi majored in Oriental Painting at Sungkyunkwan University and earned his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His recent solo exhibitions include 《Ritual en Honor a la Diosa Coca-Cola》 (Arturo Herrera Cultural Foundation Museum, Pachuca, Mexico, 2025), 《Ritual en Honor a la Diosa Coca-Cola》 (Chamber, Seoul, 2024), 《Landscape of Eight Views of Dadaepo and Their Characters》 (Hongti Art Center, Busan, 2024), 《Ibsangjin-ui》 (Good Space, Daegu, 2024), 《The Way of the 108 Gods》 (Sahng-up Gallery Euljiro, Seoul, 2023), and 《Shinjungdo 神衆道》 (Samgaksan Art Lab, Seoul, 2022).
 
He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions such as 《Miami Art Week》 (Gold Bust Motel, Miami, USA, 2024), 《Worlds Beyond Extraordinary》 (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, 2024), 《Neo-Meta-Trans-》 (ARKO Art Center, Seoul, 2024), 《The Bureau of Queer Art IV》 (Dama Gallery, California, USA, 2024), 《Traces of Time》 (Gallery A, Seoul, 2023), the international Cervantino Art Festival 《Cruzando el Pacífico》 (Guanajuato, Mexico, 2022), and 《Paisaje C》 (Museo de Arte de Pachuca, Pachuca, Mexico, 2022).
 
In 2024, Minseok Chi was selected as a resident artist at Hongti Art Center in Busan and was chosen for the Clavo Emerging Artist Project in Mexico City. He also received the 13th Arte Abierto Art Award from the Museum of the State Autonomous University of Mexico in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Tijuana Triennale in 2021.

References

• 지민석, Minseok Chi (Artist Website)
• 아르코미술관, 2024 ARKO 영아티스트데이: 작가소개 ⑧ 지민석 (ARKO Art Center, 2024 ARKO Young Artist Day: About Artist & Artwork ⑧ Minseok Chi)
• 대한민국 국제문화홍보정책실, 멕시코에서 선보인 일상과 불도의 경계에서 만나는 예술, 2017.09.20
• 갤러리 유니언, [서문] 자본주의 세계의 종말을 위한 새로운 신들 (Gallery Union, [Preface] Nuevos dioses para un fin del mundo capitalista)
• 상업화랑, [서문] 백팔신중도 (sahng-up Gallery, [Preface] 百八神衆道 The way of the 108 gods)
• 홍티아트센터, [보도자료] 다대팔경과 문자도 (Hongti Art Center, [Press Release] Landscape of eight views of Dadaepo and Their Characters)
• 임휘재, 코신제례의 합리성과 주체적 미래 상상