Korean contemporary

Transcription

Korean contemporary

Korean Eye 2012
Booth-Clibborn Editions
Korean Eye 2012
Sponsored by:
Choe Kwang-shik
Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism
The Republic of Korea
It gives me great pleasure to again offer my
wholehearted support to Korean Eye 2012.
The success of the inaugural Korean Eye:
Moon Generation exhibition, held at
the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2009,
has subsequently been built upon year
after year, and we are very proud to have
been able to introduce so many of our
leading young contemporary artists to
the international art world.
The follow-up exhibition, Korean Eye:
Fantastic Ordinary, was exhibited throughout
2010 in London and Singapore, followed
by Seoul during the G20 Summit. The third
exhibition, Korean Eye: Energy and Matter,
was previewed at the National Assembly
in Seoul before a run in New York at
the Museum of Art and Design and a very
successful showing in Abu Dhabi at the
Fairmont Hotel, where it was held under the
patronage of His Excellency Sheikh Nahyan
bin Mubarak Al Nahyan.
Korea is renowned for its fast-growing
economy and ability to create global brands,
such as Samsung and LG. Along with its
economic strength, Korea has shown a
strong and vibrant artistic and cultural scene
with huge possibilities and the capacity to
become a leading part of the international art
world, as seen in the increasing popularity
of hallyu, or the Korean Wave. It’s easy to
recognise the ingenuity and diversity of
Korean art, quite distinct from Chinese and
Japanese contemporary expression. Rooted
in a magnificent heritage, contemporary
artists in Korea take into account global as
well as local issues in their work, while also
blending in individual characteristics, which
result in a uniqueness that makes the world
sit up and take notice.
Tim Miller
Director, People, Property & Assurance,
Standard Chartered Bank and
Chairman, Standard Chartered Korea
The Ministry’s role is to develop and
implement a wide range of policies to
promote culture, arts, sports and tourism
in order to provide a wide variety of
cultural opportunities. It is thus natural
for the Ministry to support Korean Eye’s
role in producing this international
exhibition on Korean contemporary art
and providing a regular platform for Korean
art and artists to present themselves,
both at home and abroad.
This year, Korean Eye’s largest exhibition
to date, to be held at the Saatchi Gallery in
London and taking up its entire 70,000 sq. ft.
space, will be launched in July and run for
the entire duration of the Olympic Games;
made even more special by the fact that
Korea has been chosen to host the Winter
Olympics in 2018.
I’m delighted that this new exhibition, built on
the success of the previous exhibitions, will
not only provide audiences worldwide with the
opportunity to experience the strong, visceral
and visionary contemporary art of Korea, but
will also give the Korean art community a
new platform to widen their communication
channels with the rest of the world.
Lastly, I would like to offer my sincere
congratulations and thanks to the organizers,
the sponsors, the catalogue publisher and
all those concerned in this fantastic
initiative—especially the selected artists.
I very much look forward to following the
future of these artists.
Welcome to Korean Eye 2012
Korean Eye has provided an excellent
platform for Korean art to be showcased in
Seoul, New York, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and
London, allowing over 700,000 visitors to
date to enjoy this unique artwork.
It is our hope that these exhibitions will
bring international appreciation for the
depth of talent within Korea, providing an
excellent opportunity for more established
contemporary Korean artists and upcoming
talent to step into the international arena.
The Saatchi Gallery, famous for discovering
and promoting obscure but promising
artists, reviewed over 2,000 Korean emerging
artists’ portfolios, provided by Korean-Eye, to
select the 33 artists for this exhibition. It will
be the first time that the entire Saatchi Gallery
has been given over to artworks outside
its own collection, reflecting Standard
Chartered’s strong support for the exhibition
and the focus by the Saatchi Gallery’s
curatorial team on arresting contemporary
art, wherever in the world it is being made.
For over 150 years, Standard Chartered has
supported diversity and inclusion within our
global communities – in this instance, as the
main sponsor of the Korean Eye exhibitions.
The benefits of this type of exhibition are
many, such as helping to promote discussion
and understanding of cultural differences and
similarities, and for people in other countries
and cultures to experience and appreciate
Korean art. The timing of the exhibition,
running throughout the 2012 London
Olympic and Paralympic Games, where the
international spotlight will be on the UK,
provides a unique opportunity for both artists
and visitors alike.
I would also like to extend my thanks and
congratulations to the Korean Eye team,
the Standard Chartered teams in London
and Seoul, and the Saatchi Gallery who have
worked hard to make this exhibition
a success. My thanks also go out to all of
the sponsors and artists and to those of
you visiting the show.
Enjoy the exhibition.
Nigel Hurst
Chief Executive, Saatchi Gallery
David Ciclitira & Serenella Ciclitira
Founders of Korean Eye
The Saatchi Gallery’s role is to bring
contemporary art to as wide an audience as
possible and make it accessible, and I would
like to thank Standard Chartered and Korean
Eye for choosing to work with us towards
this aim.
Wherever you go in Korea, there is fluency
with technology and incredible attention to
design and detail that comes to the fore in
its very diverse new art, which is why we
wanted to take this opportunity to show it
to the wider world.
Korean Eye 2012, and this special
collaboration, presents a wonderful
opportunity to bring Korean art to a new
international audience in London to coincide
with the Olympic Games. The Saatchi
Gallery believes that contemporary art
should be available to everyone, fuel debate
and become integrated into a nation’s
culture. Over the last three years, the Saatchi
Gallery has hosted seven out of the top ten
most visited exhibitions in London, according
to The Art Newspaper ’s international survey
of museum attendance, and attracts over
1.3m visitors a year. The Gallery’s website
has also become a global meeting place for
people interested in art.
Through our collaboration with Standard
Chartered and Korean Eye, the Saatchi
Gallery has already hosted two smaller
scale exhibitions of new Korean art: Moon
Generation in 2009, and Fantastic Ordinary
in 2010. Both were hugely popular with our
visitors. Korean Eye 2012 will provide the
largest survey to date of work by young
Korean artists, and be the very first time
this group of artists have shown their work
together. It will also be the first time that the
Saatchi Gallery has chosen to help curate
and show a major exhibition of work from
outside its own collection.
This important survey of work highlights
an exciting new generation of artists who
have recently emerged, producing work that
provides an arresting insight into the future
of art in Korea.
Now is a particularly exciting time for
contemporary art wherever it is being
made. As the world grows smaller through
information technology, for which Korea is a
world leader, the art world grows larger, in
inverse proportion. It is now possible to see
work as it is being made In Africa, America,
Asia and Europe, in Seoul or London in the
same time scale; whereas it used to take
years for developments in different parts
of the world to filter through to each other.
Korean Eye is set to play a key role in
shaping our understanding of these artists’
work and provides an important gateway to
the wider culture of their homeland, because
they have absorbed many aspects of life in
Korea and chosen very individual ways to
communicate this, showing extraordinary
talent and energy. Through this exhibition,
Korean Eye and Standard Chartered are
clearly embracing new art. I would also
like to applaud the Korean government’s
commitment to its contemporary art scene
and support of emerging Korean artists.
Last, but most importantly of all, we would
like to thank the artists in Korean Eye 2012
for making such exceptional work.
Following the success of the last three
Korean Eye exhibitions, Korean Eye: Moon
Generation, Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary
and Korean Eye: Energy and Matter, we are
delighted to present Korean Eye 2012.
The 33 artists in Korean Eye 2012 were
chosen from over 2,000 artists, who
submitted portfolios containing more than
28,000 works. Korean Eye 2012 is a tribute
to the extraordinary standard of the artwork
and the dedication of the Saatchi Gallery
in helping us select and create the final
exhibition. As a result this is the largest
show we have ever staged. Enthusiasm
for contemporary Korean art is growing
continuously, and what was once an idea
has blossomed into a multi-exhibition
initiative with accompanying publications,
including Korean Eye: II, to coincide with
the launch of this exhibition. Korean Eye’s
mission is to introduce as many people to
Korean contemporary art as possible, so that
they can experience such fantastic artwork
and talent first hand.
Korean Eye 2012 opens at the Saatchi
Gallery on July 26 and will be on show
during the London Olympic and Paralympic
games until September 23. This gives us a
unique opportunity to reveal the breadth of
contemporary Korean culture and we hope
the exhibition will reach out to a new audience
who will be able to share in our passion.
Special thanks must go to our main partner,
Standard Chartered, without whom none
of this would have been possible, and their
continued support of this initiative shows
a dedication to the promotion of Korean
contemporary art. We would also like to
thank all of our other sponsors for their
generosity and commitment to this exciting
exhibition. Lastly, We would like to thank all
the team at Parallel Contemporary Art and
the Saatchi Gallery, for their hard work in
making the exhibition a reality.
We are pleased to welcome you to Korean
Eye 2012, and hope you find as much in the
work as we have.
Lee Daehyung
Connection to the New Conditions
A time capsule of the last 100 years of Korean history has landed at
the Saatchi Gallery in the shape of Cho Duck-Hyun’s installation work
The Nora Collection. The piece fills one room with the very private
story of a woman and her extraordinary life against the backdrop of
strict Korean views of femininity, Japanese occupation and the Korean
War. Yet she fought her way to be the first fashion designer in Korean
history, changed her name to Nora Noh and divorced at the age of 19
to protect her professional career. However, Cho Duck-Hyun focuses
more on the traumatic memories of all the women who survived these
harsh realities. The room, with more than 50 portraits on the walls, is
not a mere restoration of old memories, because we see through the
work, the dilemma of the identity crises of her time.
1. The Dilemma Continues
What is the difference between culture and identity? Culture is only
possible when it is shared by at least two people, and identity is only
visible when one person is differentiated from another. Yet, despite
their inherent differences, culture and identity are inseparable in
contemporary art. This is because new art, in its essence, wants
to be something different, but at the same time, it must be able to
communicate with others. This is why contemporary art exists within
the oxymoronic connection of culture and identity, of similarities
and differences, inclusion and exclusion, and of tradition and
contemporaneity.
This seems fairly simple, but a problem arises in Korea, a country
which carries the recent memories of occupation by a series of
foreign powers, including China, Japan and the United States.
Cultural identity in Korea, for the last half century, tends to be in the
oppositional mode to foreign influence, based on a subconscious
desire to restore pre-colonial cultural purity. But after the 2010 G20
Seoul Summit, more people regard trans-cultural hybridisation as
an inevitable part of Korean identity. One thing for certain is that the
identity of Korean contemporary art practice is not bound by the mere
differences in visual elements such as form, colour, size, texture and
material. Beyond the aesthetic orders in an artwork, what constantly
changes on the borderlines of the diverse culture shifts that determine
what new Korean art is.
In 2010 The Korean Culture and Information Service (KOCIS)
published a book titled ‘Korean Beauty (Ahn Graphics/KOCIS). The
book crosses the boundaries between traditional and modern genres
and uses key words such as ‘void’, ‘window landscape’, ‘overlap’,
‘humour’, ‘taste’, and ‘convergence’ to describe cultural identity. Its
use of a new, as-yet-unproven method of juxtaposing different genres
and spaces is quite different from a typical chronological method. It
raises questions such as ‘Has this image been objectively selected
to represent ‘Koreanness’?’ This predictable contradiction was
unavoidable as it attempted to explain or verify the art and culture
with calculated measures.
Many words can sum up ‘Koreanness’ in art, but ‘nature’ is probably
the most suitable. The wind, the pine tree, the moon, and the sparkling
streams and the gentle terrains of the mountains... are some signature
vocabulary exercised to describe Korea’s nature. However, no other
refined word or modifier can be compared to the deeply rooted
language of the Aesthetics of Chosun, once beautifully articulated by
Yanagi Muneyoshi (1889–1961) ‘Pure nature without imitation’, ‘serene
and simple’ and ‘gentle and carefree,’ Yanagi describes Korean
aesthetics as the ‘aesthetics of the curvy line’ that is different from the
aesthetics of China, where form is emphasised; or the aesthetics of
Japan, where colour is key. In the case of white porcelain and wooden
furniture from the Chosun Dynasty, a sense of elegant beauty and
simplistic naturalism can easily be detected, even without having to
master Yanagi’s philosophy. So his dense and analytical observations
may be useful in making the aesthetic observations or evaluations.
On the other hand, the principles of Ko YuSeop’s theory of Korean
aesthetics centre around ideas of imagination and conception
to overcome the limit of formal aesthetics. His theory hints of a
transcendent dynamism between space and time, and suggests
aesthetic traits such as ‘technique without technique’, ‘pleasant
taste’, and ‘elegant style’ as part of the principles of the traditional art
of Korea. Whereas, Kim WonRyong argues that the harmony between
the art of nature and the man-made is the backbone of Korean art
and depicts conciseness, the ordinary, and rhythm as forming the
aesthetic features of the traditional art of Korea. Thus, to this day, the
sense of Korean identity still seems to be focused on tradition rather
than the contemporary.
Ancient and modern Korean art history abounds with countless
research data, whereas contemporary Korean art seems to shiver
shyly in the shadows, and commentators are still conservative in
defining its identity. This lack of discourse is the reason behind the
disparity between contemporaneity and so-called Koreanness. The
issue at hand seems to be the realisation of how dangerous the word
‘Koreanness’ may sound with time because the majority of artwork
that wears are cognisable. Koreanness as a signature departs strongly
from the traits of the past. The word Koreanness is still framed within
the range of traditional art and is stuck within the boundaries of
specific topics and conventional formalities. Imagine the fruit (the
contemporary) without the root (the past) or vice versa.
2. Four Conceptual Spaces
Here are four conceptual categories: the ‘modernist space’, the
‘political space’, the ‘capital space’ and the ‘knowledge space’. Each
one of the categories is a space where a dialogue can be shared to
reinterpret the idea of Korean beauty without reference to subject,
shape, colour or format.
Firstly, the ‘modernist space’ in Korea indicates the time from the
1960s to the late 1980s. The conceptual backbone for artists during
this time was the semi-political disposition of Greenberg’s approach
to Modernism, which argues that art can develop through the means
(or the ideas) of exclusive criticism. Its political tendency resulted
from the social exhaustion that grew from the sectarianism and
the ideology of anti-communism of the time. The artists insisted
on defining fine art as a refined form, completely pure of worldly
elements and entirely exclusive of their own forms of structure.
Secondly, the political space was born as a reaction to the ‘modernist
space’. It has two spatial dispositions that stretched out from
the 1980s to the late 1990s. First, the Minjung Misool was an art
movement of the 1980s that reacted to Korean Modernism and
confronted the military regime at the time. In the mid 1990s and
onwards, the political space extended the individual’s social interests
to areas such as the communication and harmony between art and
technology, sex, feminism, subcultures, urbanism (metropolis) and the
media. If the first disposition represented the social outbursts against
political suppression, the latter represented curiosity about the
outside world and a reaction to the birth of the Internet. The reflection
on the existing values, ethics, and systems of Postmodernism led to
a diversification in the methodologies of contemporary art. Thus, in
terms of artistic practice, the basis of an individual’s interests became
more significant than the formative practice of many schools and
institutions that exerted their taste and power over various exhibitions.
Thirdly, the capital space reflects the rise and fall of the art market
after the year 2000. Many auction houses gained significant power
and influence over museums or galleries. Such a phenomenon
became apparent when exhibitions in Korea showed a preference
towards the art market, and universities began to show enthusiasm
for the teachings of market and capital as opposed to an education
based around ideology and philosophy. Furthermore, auction bids
made news headlines in the media and newspapers, as critics and
curators lost their voice. The capital began to command the interests
and direction of art from then and there. With the expansion of the
market, there began many residency programs, art fairs, corporate
awards and hundreds of newly opened galleries starting their search
for artists. Since the 1990s artists have felt the pressure from the
market to transform experimental themes and forms into sources
of capital. ‘Modernist space,’ ‘political space,’ and ‘capital space’
are the three main factors that have substantially influenced the
contemporary Korean art scene. Contemporary Korean art has always
been tied up to those systems only to remain at a passive level. To be
more specific, due to the absence of initiative, contemporary Korean
art is sometimes considered as imitating what is already out there, or
always being dependent on political authority and capital.
So lastly this leads us to ‘knowledge space’, a space made from
the balanced involvement of artists, curators, collectors, art
critics, editors, ministers of culture, art historians, art dealers and
auctioneers. Within this sphere, ‘knowledge space’ may construct
creative connections based on active communication with other
fields. ‘Knowledge space’ is a space of constant change. Korea
has shown great development in the past few years as social
infrastructure such as urban planning, architecture, media and
the Internet have become highly established, and social, cultural,
aesthetic, institutional, and moral attitudes have reached a certain
stage that can be understood and accepted internationally.
The contemporary Korean art world has shown much development
too. Now many collectors are equipped with a keen eye for judging
and evaluating a work of art after experiencing both the growth
and recession of the art market. The working realm of artists has
also become more diverse as artists from different genres and
backgrounds work together and Korea has developed a more global
perspective.
This kind of, ‘knowledge space’ provides an environment in which
opposing aesthetic ideologies can communicate, transform even their
original character, evolve and, in turn, open doors for new conditions
to develop. It is a sign of the shift from the strict, institutional
organisational categories to the flexible perception of nationality,
gender, generation, class, geopolitical locale and more. These
changes are not those that can be determined from international
art theory or the newest trends in Western contemporary art alone.
They are determined from changes in cultural, economic, social and
political situations beyond the boundaries of Koreanness.
3. Five Conditions to Revisit Contemporary Korean Art
This new environment may spur more independent conditions in
Korean contemporary art, augmenting it with diversity rather than
fitting it to a trend, and reforming its hierarchy The first two (a &
b) conditions explain the cultural, technological, and theoretical
backgrounds while the final three (b, c & d) visualise the dilemmas
and conflicts for the artists in the transition of social, cultural and
technological conditions.
a) The Fastest SNS (Social Network Service)
If globalism is a kind of economic, political and cultural concept,
SNS is a kind of structure and network that opens possibilities and
acts as a means to utilise these concepts in a novel way. When art is
viewed as a medium that modern mankind consumes, the study and
significance of social networks, which transmit this medium, should
not be overlooked. Especially for Korean contemporary artists still
on the periphery, social networks act as platforms for overcoming
the disadvantages of being potentially marginalised. In this new
environment, without having to follow a trend, artists can promote
themselves and create a showcase for their work.
b) The Rise of GeoAesthetics
Can contemporary art anywhere be defined by one aesthetic
standard? How would Korean contemporary art be defined by a
British critic who has studied and written about British artists? Can
globalism be applied to art theory? This is not entirely irrelevant to
the changes in the cultural environment and media systems such
as SNS as discussed earlier. However new, Korean art has matured
enough to exert greater influence than before. That is not to say
that GeoAesthetics should be mistaken for something so weighty as
to reflect one nation’s history. Rather, the burden of representing a
nation’s cultural identity should be shaken off. The key is how well the
equilibrium is maintained.
c) Reality Becomes Solid Illusion
The concept of a solid illusion is a paradox, a contradiction and a kind
of impossibility. It is a metaphor to describe a condition of illusions
created between tangibility and intangibility. Of course it is a mere
reflection of a physical entity, but that reflection begins to seem
real. Therefore what we call reality may in fact be merely an illusion
of what we are actually able to observe. In this context, the targets
of perception are not solely aimed at objects per se but to wider
perspectives, views, relationships and communication.
This new definition of illusion has captivated many Korean artists and
pushed them to invent new ways of making more plausible illusions.
Today’s cultural convergence of art, science and technology provides
greater opportunities for the artists to challenge the very notion
of how art is presented and to call into question its definition and
function in our rapidly changing convergence society. Virtual reality,
augmented reality, 3D mapping effects, and many other multimedia
technologies are already prevailing in Korea’s multimedia environment,
and thus the artists are more exposed to this new reality that keeps
erasing the distance between reality and illusion.
This is why we see many solid illusionists in the contemporary Korean
art scene. For example, it is easy to define Bahk Seon Ghi’s Point of
View 09-08 in terms of mimesis. His illusionistic technique is trying to
evoke the perception of form without suggesting a literal meaning.
But the classic concept of illusion is destroyed in his charcoal sitespecific installation. An image that initially looks solid is dismantled on
closer viewing.
Uram Choe’s kinetic sculpture Varietal Urbanus Female engages the
viewer in the artist’s futuristic fantasy world. This female Urbanus
releases its energy as a light form from the flower-like mechanical
body. His use of technology transforms the traditional definition of
realism as a trompe l’oeil painting or sculpture into a hackneyed
anachronism. He is not simply duplicating reality, but has created a
work that moves so slowly that the illusionary movement becomes an
interaction between the viewer and the object. ‘Seeing is believing’ is
not always right.
d) WOMAD CODE: Woman Nomad Code
The mobility of information and people has changed our perception
of space, time, place, social relations and even our identity. WOMAD
CODE is a metaphor for young Korean female artists in their 20s
living, working and travelling outside Korea. WOMAD CODE, a
hybrid between woman and nomad, equally focuses on the issues of
nomadic culture and the changed female identity. Nomad symbolises
mobility. Their starting point is Korea, but what we encounter here
is not the typical image of Korean women who have been pictured
as obedient and dutiful but that of ‘Anti-Orientalists’. Cheaper
international travel and easier access to higher education, economic
affluence and globalism has allowed them the experience of making
work outside Korea and exhibiting it on an international stage. They
connect new social, political, cultural and historical experience and
have invented a more fluid place for progressive politics, change and
multi-layered meanings in their work. In her deceptively beautiful installation Translation-vase series 2011,
Meekyoung Shin reproduces Chinese porcelains with perfect soap
replicas and places them in completely different historical, cultural
and institutional contexts. These artifacts, as they travel between
Korea and Britain, the bathroom and the museum, bring together very
different cultural contexts. The smell of soap further widens the gap
between what you see and what they are.
Ahn Doojin’s Fault Lines enjoys a kind of absurd confrontation
between the sacred and the playful. Unpolished and coarse lightheartedness infiltrates into a holy structure of the sanctified. This
heterogeneous collage attacks the strict dichotomy between the
artist’s private realm and history’s public space. His critical pun
encourages interaction in these seemingly incomparable arenas
while encompassing a wide range of artistic encounters.
Korean-American artist Debbie Han’s 32 Venus busts installation,
The Battle of Conception, emphatically demonstrates the idea
that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. She confronts the
standardised definition of beauty by abandoning the traditional
Venus face, and replacing each bust with the mutated faces or
those of different ethnicities.
Lee Ji-Yen’s collage Wherever You Will Go is not depicting a space but
accumulating different times. In other words, multiple time-zones create
an imaginary space where fragments of different times exist in the
same space. The result is an amazing spectacle that defies boundaries
between beginning and ending, centre and periphery, individuality and
collectivity, private and public and local and global identity.
e) Collage – From Medium to Philosophy
Collage has become more than a medium. It is virtually everywhere.
From TV to the Internet, newspaper to smartphone, and signboard to
media facade, everything we see is an assemblage of fragments with
varying points of view. The flow of information moves in a non-linear
way and people use multiple windows to see the world that defies any
unifying system or perspective. However, this does not necessarily
mean that there is no ruling perspective, but rather the value of many
smaller and varied viewpoints superseding a bigger one.
Conclusion – From Utopia to Heterotopia
This essay explores connections, contexts and conditions behind
what we might expect to be Koreanness in contemporary Korean
art. Changed conditions have forced artists to accept different
viewpoints and contexts. Enjoying the moment of resistance against
any assumed or imposed hierarchies, new Korean art is still in a
profound process of redefinition. The current re-emergence of collage
in contemporary art practice has its root in globalism and Korea’s
new social, political and economic conditions. These unprecedented
influences have generated a ‘world-is-flat’ phenomenon. This being
the denationalising of artistic movements, the inflation of ‘being
international’, and the homogenisation of cultural differences. Some
people thought globalism might kill local identity, but in reality, while
local values remain, Korean artists enjoy ever-increasing chances to
show their work on the international stage and expose their practice
to new influences. They have begun to rethink their own individual
identity, history and culture in a broader geo-aesthetic situation where
a rigid national label is no longer necessary.
Many artists presented here have a unique understanding of media,
history, private memories, culture, identity and globalism. Their
interpretations using collage unmask the very nature of their changed
society. The artists commonly arrive at an aesthetic position that
creates not only a methodological bridge beween art, novel, design,
technology, architecture and motion picture, but also a chronological
link from the past to the present, and even to the future.
Cho Duck-Hyun’s highly controlled installation of drawings in The
Nora Collection precludes the preoccupation with hierarchies, family
and conflicts in Asian history. His understanding of history relies
instead on an aesthetic of symbolic exchange, rooted in generosity
and intimacy. The result presented to the viewer successfully
transforms mundane subjects into a fantastic and obviously fictional
history. The precision with which a myriad of details by charcoal
drawing are arranged, mixes history, nostalgia, romance, identity,
family and spirituality into a single frame.
Artists
Ahn Chul-Hyun
Ahn Doojin
Bae Joonsung
Bahk Seon-Ghi
Chae Mihyun & Dr. Jung
Cho Duck Hyun
Choe Uram
Choi Chongwoon
Han Debbie
Hong Euyoung
Hong Seung Hee
Hong Soo-Yeon
Hong Sung-Chul
Je Baak
Jung Seung
Kang Hyung Koo
Kim Byoungho
Kim Dong Yoon
Kim Hyuen Jun
Koo Sungsoo
Lee Gilwoo
Lee Jaehyo
Lee Jiyen
Lee Jonggeon
Lee Kwang-Ho
Lee Moonjoo
Moon Beom
Oh Jeong Il
Shin Meekyoung
Sim Seung-Wook
Yeesookyung
Yoo Haeri
You Myung Gyun
Ahn Chul-Hyun
Mu Rung Do Won
Ahn Chul-Hyun
Mu Rung Do Won
Ahn Doojin
Fault Lines
Bae Joonsung
The Costume of Painter –
Museum Al, Ingres sh
Bae Joonsung
Phantom of Museum O,
J.S.Sargent fan hy with drawing legs
Bae Joonsung
The Costume of Painter – Museum R, legs left 2
Previous: The Costume of Painter –
Phantom of Museum Gm, J.L.David red shawl hn
Bahk Seon-Ghi
Point of View 09-08
Echo Daytime
Echo Daytime
Cho Duck Hyun
The Nora Collection
Cho Duck Hyun
The Nora Collection
Cho Duck Hyun
The Nora Collection
Cho Duck Hyun
The Nora Collection
Choe Uram
Varietal Urbanus Female
Choe Uram
Varietal Urbanus Female
Choi Chongwoon
A Storm in a Teacup
Han Debbie
Battle of Conception
Han Debbie
Battle of Conception
Hong Euyoung
Haesung Villa
Hong Seung Hee
Der Zwang zur Tiefe #2
Hong Seung Hee
Left: Der Zwang zur Tiefe #4
Right: Der Zwang zur Tiefe #6
Hong Soo-Yeon
Left: Acrobats #6
Right: Acrobats #4
Hong Soo-Yeon
Left: Shadow of Winter #1
Right: Shadow of Winter #2
Hong Soo-Yeon
Still Life in Space #2
Hong Sung-Chul
String Mirror_eye_2377
Hong Sung-Chul
Mirror_hand_0514
Hong Sung-Chul
String Mirror_IMG_7252 , 7258
Hong Sung-Chul
String_hands_0246
Je Baak
The Structure of #1, #2, #3, #4
Je Baak
The Structure of #1
Je Baak
The Structure of #4
Jung Seung
Chair II (essaie II)
Kang Hyung Koo
Theresa
Kim Byoungho
Soft Crash
Kim Dong Yoon
Caged Garbage
Kim Dong Yoon
Left: Dome
Right: Climbing Cage
Kim Dong Yoon
Left: Composites
Right: Hays
Kim Hyuen Jun
Left: Fragile
Top: CE
Bottom: KING
Kim Hyuen Jun
Left: ART no
Right: The Side up
Koo Sungsoo
From the Series Magical Reality
Tour Bus
Koo Sungsoo
Comics
Koo Sungsoo
Korean Restaurant
Lee Gilwoo
Dancer in Nature
Lee Gilwoo
Dancer in Nature
Lee Gilwoo
Left: Irrelevant Answer
Right: Dancer in Nature
Lee Gilwoo
Irrelevant Answer 6
Lee Jaehyo
0121–1110=107041
Lee Jaehyo
0121–1110=107041
Lee Jaehyo
0121–1110=112034
Lee Kwang-Ho
Cactus No. 75
Lee Kwang-Ho
Cactus No. 37
Lee Jiyen
Walking on Air- ver 2
Lee Jiyen
Wherever You Will Go
Lee Jiyen
Above the Timberline
Lee Jonggeon
Bridge of Paradise
Lee Moonjoo
Cruise
Lee Moonjoo
Closed Road
Lee Moonjoo
Detroit, Michigan
Moon Beom
Previous: Secret Garden 253_pink, paynes grey
Right: Secret Garden 251_black, gold
Oh Jeong Il
Lover
Oh Jeong Il
Braid
Oh Jeong Il
Braid
Shin Meekyoung
Translation-vase series
Shin Meekyoung
Translation-vase series
Sim Seung-Wook
Black Gravity
Yeesookyung
Translated Vase
Yeesookyung
Translated Vase (2 pieces)
Yeesookyung
Translated Vase (2 pieces)
Yeesookyung
Previous: Flame 2009-1
Left: Flame 2009-2
Right: Flame 2009-3
Yoo Haeri
Family Unit
Yoo Haeri
Honeymoon Island
Yoo Haeri
Lazy Sitter
Yoo Haeri
Sunken Garden
You Myung Gyun
The Floating World
You Myung Gyun
Right: The Floating World
Next: The Photosynthesis
Artist information
Ahn Chul-Hyun
Mu Rung Do Won (Infinite Garden), 2008,
Plywood, mirror, lights, plants, rocks, branches,
213.4 × 304.8 × 91.4 cm
Chul-Hyun Ahn creates sculptures utilising
light, colour and illusion to physically
represent his investigations into infinite
space. Ahn’s interest in the gap between
the conscious and subconscious compels
him to construct illusionistic environments
providing a space for contemplation. His
sculpture urges the viewer to consider man’s
boundless ability for physical and spiritual
travel while exploiting illusions of infinity and
the poetics of emptiness.
Education
2002 MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA
1997 BFA, Chu-Gye University for the Arts, Seoul, Korea
Chul-Hyun Ahn has translated geometric
painting and the Zen practice of meditation
into an art of light, space and technology.
Ahn entices the viewer to look deeply into
the frame of his environments. His works
create an optical and bodily illusion of
infinity through apparent limitless space.
The notion of the void distinguishes his
work amid the vast panoply of ways in
which artists have used light as a medium
since experiments during the 1920s and
particularly since the 1960s.
Group exhibitions
2011 Perception/Deception: Illusion in Contemporary Art,
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, USA
2010 Look Again, Curator: Steven Matijcio, Southeastern Center
for Contemporary Art, Winston Salem, USA
2009 A Sculpture Show, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, USA
2008 Momentum: Contemporary Art from the Harn Collection,
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida,
Gainesville, USA
Light and Transition, Caprice Horn Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2007 Janet & Walter Sondheim Semi-Finalist Exhibition, Decker
Gallery, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA
2006 Group Exhibition School 33, CPS Gallery, New York, USA
Biennial Exhibition, Baltimore, USA
2004 Luminous Recurrence, The Shore Institute of the
Contemporary Arts, Long Branch, New Jersey, USA,
2003 Infinity – Emptiness, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, USA
2002 ACADEMY 2002, Conner Contemporary,
Washington, D.C., USA
Six Degrees in Cold Storage, CAA Conference,
Philadelphia, USA
2001 Multiplicity, Gallery 4, Baltimore, USA
1999 Group Exhibition, Creole Gallery, Lansing, USA
1996 New Frontier Exhibition, Kyung-In Art Museum, Korea
The Joong-Ang Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, Korea
The Grand Art Exhibition of Art World,
Seoul Museum of Art, Korea
The 15th Grand Art Exhibition of Korea
1995 Indeco Gallery, Seoul, Korea, Finder Complex
Solo exhibitions
2010 Caprice Horn Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2008 Phenomena: Visual Echo, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, USA
2007 New Work , C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, USA
2005 Visual Echoes, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, USA, USA
New Work , Conner Contemporary, Washington, D.C., USA
2004 Infinite Directions, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, USA
Collections
Borusan Foundation Collection, Istanbul, Turkey
Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, USA
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA
Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation, Portland, USA
Ahn Doojin
Fault Lines, 2011,
Wood, foamboard, iron, mixed media,
350 × 660 × 700 cm
Born in 1975, Ahn Doojin creates installations
using a combination of paintings and
collected children’s toys. Ahn uses found
materials to create his own narratives –
developing a language and system of
making paintings and installations that is
self-generating. In this sense the work can
be seen to generate from both the allusions
that it makes, and the underlying process
of drawing and painting that Ahn employs.
The spaces in Ahn’s installations are thus
turned into a place for exchange, gathering,
soliloquy and imagination.
Education
2006 MFA, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 The Fault Lines, SongEun ArtSpace, Seoul, Korea
2009 History of Izzard, Cais Gallery, Hong Kong, China
2008 Covert Party at Makcom, Project Space Sarubia, Seoul, Korea
2006 Saint Brain Temple, Brain Factory, Seoul, Korea
2005 Fantastic Hot Story,
Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, Suwon, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 Shift, Johyun Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2010 Collage of Memory, Soka Art Center, Beijing, China
Healing, SeoulArtSpace, Seongbuk, Seoul, Korea
In Between, One & J Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Open studio – Mongin Art Studio,
Mongin Art Space, Seoul, Korea
2009 One day: Room Project,
Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
io, Harlem Studio fellowship, New York, USA
Harlem Open Studio, Harlem Studio fellowship, New York, USA
Doors, Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery, New York, USA
Up and Comers,
Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
2008 I Am an Artist – Young Korean Artist, National Museum of
Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
Busan Biennale, Me-world, Busan, Korea
2007 Stress Fighter, Alternative Space Pool, Seoul, Korea
Hi Pop, Yemac Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Art Forecast, Artistic Report on First-Term Artists at Nanji Art
Studio, Seoul, Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
The Surplus Time, The Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2006 Drawn To Drawing, Soma Museum, Seoul, Korea
A Better Tomorrow, D club Party lounge, Seoul, Korea
2005 JoongAng Fine Arts Competition, HanGarm Art Museum of
Seoul Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2004 Talking To The Wall, Arko Art Center, Seoul, Korea
Awards and residencies
2011 CAN FOUNDATION HANOK PROJECT,
CAN Foundation, Seoul, Korea
2009 Harlem Studio Fellowship, New York, USA
2008 Mongin Art Studio by Mongin Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2007 Changdong International Artists Studio of Korea
2006 Nanji Art creation Studio by Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Selected for support, Kyonggi Cultural Foundation
2005 Selected for New Artists, JoongAng FINE Art Competition
Bae Joonsung
Museum Al, Ingres sh, 2008,
Lenticular and oil on canvas,
130.3 × 193.9 cm
Phantom of Museum O,
J.S.Sargent fan hy
with drawing legs, 2008,
218.2 × 290.9 cm
Phantom of Museum Gm,
J.L.David red shawl hn, 2009,
181.8 × 259.1 cm
Museum R, legs left 2, 2009,
181.8 × 290.9 cm
Born in 1967 in Gwangju, Bae Joonsung
completed a BFA and an MFA at Seoul
National University and now lives and
works in Seoul.
Solo exhibitions
2011 The Costume of Painter –
Moving Still Life, Art Seasons, Singapore
2000 Naming, Gallery Ihn, Seoul, Korea
The series The Costume of the Painter
is a body of work which he painted on to
transparent acrylic films. These films change
when viewed to reveal Asian female nudes
underneath. Bae Joonsung appropriates
old master paintings and contextualises the
original image within his pastiche. Since
2006 the introduction of the lenticular panels
in his work made this viewing experience
even more pronounced. His most recent
series of paintings is ‘The Museum’, where
Bae Joonsung has emphasised the theme
of relativity by placing his work in the multiperspective environment of museums.
Group exhibitions
2012 Korean Contemporary Art,
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan
2011 The senses; Interactive Perception,
HADA Contemporary, London, UK
2010 Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary,
Korea Foundation Cultural Center, Seoul, Korea
Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary, The Art House, Singapore
Korean Collective London, Albemarle Gallery, London, UK
Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary,
The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2009 Ingres and the Moderns, Musée Ingres, Montauban, France
2008 Lee Yongduck, Bae Joonsung Show,
Art Seasons, Zurich, Switzerland
First Step, Art Seasons, Beijing, China
Blue Dot Asia, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
First Step, Art Seasons, Singapore
2007 SH Contemporary, Shanghai, China
2006 Paris Show 2006, Paris, France
Now Korea, Canvas International Art Gallery, Amsterdam, Holland
May show, Skape Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Beijing Art Fair, Beijing, China
2005 3rd Frieze Art Fair, Regent’s Park, London, UK
Summer Show, PKM Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Arco Art Fair, PKM Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2004 John Chelsea Art Center, New York, USA
The Armory Show 2004, Pier 92, New York, USA
2003 Crossing 2003: Korea/ Hawaii,
The Contemporary Museum, Hawaii, USA
2002 Korea Contemporary Art, Korean Embassy, Brussels, Belgium
Photobiennale 2002, Moscow, Russia
Les Métamorphoses du Modèle, Dalim Museum, Seoul, Korea
2001 Model & Mode, Moscow Museum of Art, Moscow, Russia
The Eye of Korean Contemporary Art,
Sungkok Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2000 Arles Photo Festival, Arles Museum, France
Korean Figure and Landscape,
Korean Cultural Center, Paris, France
1999 Peindre la Peinture, Hanlim Museum of Art, Taejeon, Korea
Art & Artwear, National Museum of Contemporary Art,
Kwachen, Korea
Art Festival in May, Chosun Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1998 In the Year of the Tiger, Ludwig Form, Aachen, Germany
Kiss Exhibition, Gallery Savina, Seoul, Korea
Awards
1995 Grand Prix, Chung Kyungja Art Culture Foundation, Korea
2000 Young Artist Prix, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Korea
Bahk Seon-Ghi
Point of View 09-08, 2009,
Burned wood, Installation,
150 × 140 × 195 cm
Since the beginning of time the tree has
been a close companion of man. Seon-Ghi
Bahk suspends charcoal in midair using
transparent nylon string, which creates
a consistent or sometimes inconsistent
pattern. This allows the viewer to visualise
how the material expresses lightness within
the space. The light coming through narrow
apertures softens, so that the charcoal
represents an axis shared between nature
and man.
The burned wood used in the artist’s work
represents the rebirth of the tree in the form
of a new material. He suspends this charcoal
along nylon threads, scattering the material
in a range of visually recognisable shapes,
creating a three-dimensional monochromatic
painting, and introducing the colour and
material to the viewer’s space. The opaque
black colour inherent to the material can be
symbolic of anxiety, evil, the night’s sky or a
void, but in the context of the artist’s work it
takes on a new role and meaning.
Each piece of charcoal is arranged to create
a fixed form and framework, exploring its
relationship with the space it occupies. The
work creates a tension between the fixed
form using the solid charcoal and the void
spaces in between each part.
Education
2002 Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan
1994 Chungang University, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 Endless Enumeration in Space, Galerie Andres Thalmann, Zurich
2009 Gallery IHN, Seoul, Korea
2008 Gallery Sabina, Los Angeles, USA
2007 Existence, Arquitectos de Cordova, Cordoba, Spain
2006 Galeria Arte Contemporanea Jorge Shirley, Lisbon, Portugal
2004 Galeria EDURNE, Madrid, Spain
2003 Galeria Arte Contemporanea Jorge Shirley, Lisbon, Portugal
2002 Galerie Artinprogress, Berlin, Germany
2001 Galleria Lawrence Rubin, Milan, Italy
1999 Cascina Roma, Sandonato Milanese, Milan, Italy
1998 Gallery Luigi di Sarro, Rome, Italy
Group exhibitions
2010 KOREA TOMORROW, CETEC, Ilsan, Korea
2009 Kim Chong Yung Sculpture Prize, Kim Chong Yung Sculpture
Museum, Seoul, Korea
Korean Eye: Moon Generation, the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2008 Art Paris–Abu Dhabi, Gallery Sun Contemporary, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2007 atelier artists exhibition, Gana Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2006 The Way of Viewing Objects, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2005 Seoul Art Fair, Gana Art Center, Hangaram Museum,
Seoul Arts Center, Seoul Korea
2004 International Art Fair Lille, Galeria Arte & Manifesto, Lille, France
2003 Should Say Not All Still life, Gana Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2002 ‘KIAF’International Contemporary Art Fair in Korea, Gallery
Lawrence Rubin, Busan, Korea
2001 Intersezioni oriente - occidente, Space Hajech, Milan, Italy
2000 Arte si parte, Faundation Sirssu, Lugano, Switzerland
1999 Salon of Natural Artists, Musée National de l’Histoire Naturelle,
Paris, France
1998 Peiscopio 1998, Cascina Roma, San Donato Milanese, Milan, Italy
1997 Visual Rave, Società Umanitaria, Milan, Italy
1996 San Carlo Borromeo, Museo Permanente, Milan, Italy
1995 The Exhibition of Engraving, Anemoni, Milan, Italy
Collections
Island Resort Korea C.C, Dabudo, Korea
The Shilla Hotel 2006–2011 6th, Seoul, Korea
Galleria Foret, Seoul, Korea
Sky Valley C.C, Yeoju, Korea
Oak Valley, WonJu, Korea
Janghung Art Park Museum, Janghung, Korea
Echo Daytime, 2006,
Optical Pumping Laser, Control Systems,
Synchronized Movements,
800 × 300 cm
Chae Mihyun’s unusual choice of media –
lasers, sensor vibration machines, and
seismographic equipment – has led her to
become a well recognised installation artist.
As today’s society bases its daily life around
technology, Chae attempts to represent
how technology has become peoples’
‘second nature’ and how we have become
inseparable from it. She uses lasers as a
medium to express effectively the idea that
our everyday life has ironically been stunted
by technology and that we are losing sight of
who we really are.
Education
1986 Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
1982 Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2006 A sublime dinner ‘Laser Drawings’,
Kim Jin Hye Gallery, Seoul, Korea
White Paper, Chandong National Art Studio, Seoul, Korea
2004 Laser Project – ‘Light of Life’, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1996 Laser & Strings, Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
1994 Time, History, Human, Traces, Fine Art Center, Seoul, Korea
1988 Echo-Series, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2010 Taegeuk: Searching for the Global Circle, Korea University
Museum, Seoul, Korea
2008 The 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale: ‘Turn and
Widen’, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2007 In Commemoration of the 15th Anniversary of the Amity
Between Korea and China, Contemporary Korean Art,
National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China
2004 The Peace Project: For the Peace/Toward the Peace,
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea
Seoul Olympic Art Museum Opening Exhibition: Stillness &
Movement, Olympic Art Museum, Seoul, Korea
Science in Art, Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, Korea
Residencies
2003–2004 Artist-In-Residence,
Changdong National Art Studio, Seoul, Korea
Cho Duck Hyun
The Nora Collection, 2008,
Graphite and charcoal on canvases,
frames, wall papers,
Dimensions variable
Cho Duck Hyun’s work is about history,
nostalgia, romance, identity, family and
spirituality. Like many contemporary
artists, he is not content to confine his
activities to one medium, and has made
compelling work in several genres including
painting, photography, performance art
and environmental art. He has also adapted
certain strategies and aesthetics of Western
art without sacrificing his deep roots in
Korean culture.
Born in 1957, at the time of his debut as an
artist he was thoroughly aware of some of
the tensions that still existed between the
East and West. He came into his own when
he turned to history painting around 1990.
With the birth of a daughter in 1991, Cho
turned his attention to the lives of women
in Korean society. The artist could easily
have continued in this vein, cementing a
reputation as one of his country’s most
capable and intriguing realists, but a
restless temperament seemed to have lead
him in other, more surprising directions,
thematically tied together by roots in
Korean history. He has focused on two
women in particular, Nora Noh and Joeongshun Lee (to whom he devoted full-length
portraits, drawings and videos). As in
previous projects, Cho’s re-creation of the
lives of these two remarkable women is
achieved through disparate means, allowing
the spectator to make his or her own
connections and providing a rich ambience
for reflection and visceral understanding.
Traditional means of narration are trumped
by richly atmospheric storytelling that
nevertheless provides the satisfactions
of the age-old pleasures of art-making –
draughtsmanship, an understanding of how
parts relate to a whole, and a certain mystery
that lifts the work from the simply satisfying
into the realm of the magical.
Solo exhibitions
2011 Homage, Park Sookeun Museum, Yang-goo, Korea
2009 Dark Water, Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
2000 Dog of Ashkelon – Journey to Alien God,
Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
History Lesson,
Royal Hibernian Academy Gallagher Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
Layers, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1998 Memories of the Twentieth Century,
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, USA
1997 L.A. International, invited by Sotheby’s, Los Angeles, USA
Recent works, André Emmerich Gallery, New York, USA
1996 Genealogy; on My Father, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1995 Cho Duck Hyun, Institute of Contemporary Art,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
Boxes, Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
1994 New Winds of Asia, Sogetsu Museum, Tokyo, Japan
1993 L.A. International, invited by Dorothy Goldeen Gallery,
Los Angeles, USA
Wall, Boxes and…, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 ‘Shifting Surfaces’, Art Sonjae Museum, Gyung-Ju, Korea
2007 ‘Incarnation’, Hammond Museum, New York, USA
2006 ‘Through the Looking Glass’, Asia House, London, UK
2005 ‘The Elegance of Silence’, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
‘Seoul; Until Now!’, Charlottenborg Exhibition Hall,
Copenhagen, Denmark
2003 Leaning Forward Looking Back ,
The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA
2002 The 4th Gwangju Biennial – Project 3, Gwanju, Korea
1999 Dreams 1900–2000: Science, Art and The Unconcious Mind,
The Equitable Gallery, New York, USA
The Time of Our Lives, New Museum, New York, USA
1998 Five Continents and One City, Mexico City Museum, Mexico
City, Mexico
1997 The 2nd Johannesburg Biennial, Johannesburg, South Africa
1996 Traditions/Tensions, Grey Art Gallery, Queens Museum,
The Asia Society Gallery, New York, USA
Theme Hiroshima, Hiroshima City Museum, Hiroshima, Japan
1995 The 4th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey
Information & Reality,
The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
1994 The 22nd São Paulo Biennial, Parc Ibirapuera, São Paulo, Brazil
Choe Uram
Varietal Urbanus Female, 2007,
Etched stainless steel, LED, circuits, motors,
CPU board, custom software, cable,
Closed: 75 × 75 × 141 cm,
Open: 216 × 216 × 137 cm
Born in 1970, the artist Uram Choe believes
that everything with life has movement. By
adopting movement as a vital component
in his work, the artist gives birth to new
mechanical creatures.
As with all living organisms, the mechanical
creatures are entrapped in the past, present,
and future. Feeding off human desires, these
creatures propagate through an autogenetic
process of their own secret environment.
Each creature is titled using a combination
of names derived from plants, animals,
machinery or materials that closely resemble
it; along with the name of its ‘discoverer’–
the artist. A narrative component persists
throughout his work. With Ultima Mudfox
(2002), Uram began deliberately to establish
a history and tale for his creations. Using
these, he breathes life into otherwise solid
masses, which now co-exist with humans in
a new time and space.
Education
2000 BFA, Chungang University, Seoul, Korea
1999 MFA, Chungang University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2012U -Ram Choe Show, John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Australia
2011 In Focus, Asia Society Museum, New York, USA
2010 New Urban Species,
Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, USA
Kalpa, Bitforms Gallery, New York, USA
2008 Anima Machines, SCAI The Bath House, Tokyo, Japan
2007 U-Ram Choe, The Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, USA
2006 New Active Sculpture, Bitforms Gallery, New York, USA
City Energy- MAM Project004, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
2002Ultima Mudfox , Do Art Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 Korean Eye; Energy and Matter,
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, USA
The Creators Project; New York 2011,
DUMBO, New York, USA
2010 Printemps Parfume, Centre des Arts d’ Enghien-les-Bains,
Enghien-les-Bains, France
2008Made Up; Liverpool Biennial, FACT, Liverpool, UK
1st Asian Art Triennial, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
Open Space, NTT Intercommunication Center (ICC),
Tokyo, Japan
2007 Spirit of Place; Genius Loci, 3th Biwako Biennale,
Omi Hachiman City, Japan
2006 6th Shanghai Biennale-Hyper Design, Shanghai, China
2004 Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art Opening Exhibition,
Leeum, Seoul, Korea
Chinese International Gallery Exposition,
Beijing Expocenter, Beijing, China
Offisina Asia, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy
The Armory Show, Piers 90 and 92, New York, USA
2003 D.U.M.B.O. art under the bridge festival,
DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York, USA
2001 Artificial Life, Busan Municipal Art Museum, Busan, Korea
2009 Residency at Doosan Art Center, New York, USA
Kim se choong Sculpture Award, Young sculptor part,
Kim se choong memorial work organisation, Korea
2006 Young Artist Today Award, Korean government
POSCO Steel Art Award, grand prize, POSCO TJ Park
Foundation, Korea
Choi Chongwoon
A Storm in a Teacup, 2006,
Table, motor, English tea, sensor, magnet,
80 × 60 × 60 cm
The development of civilisation may have
enriched the lives of human beings, but
on the other hand it drained us of our
emotions. I live my life within the benefits of
civilisation and through my encounters with
everyday objects I try to reveal the feelings
that modern-day people try to hide. I try to
express the existential meaning behind mass
production and the emotions of loneliness,
sadness and fear that every human feels.
A person sitting all alone in a café drinking
a cup of coffee can feel extremely lonely,
and one can also feel the same sadness
when they light a candle while sitting in the
corner of a room. These days people are
afraid of revealing their true feelings. They
may convey the image of being happy but
that may not be the truth. I believe that
these negative effects arise from a type
of self-defence people create to survive
within a society that has built a kind of
invisible competition. I feel that there is a
need to observe and contemplate the pain
that current society is feeling. I take these
thoughts of mine and express them through
different formats of space and movement,
nature and artificial nature, shape and
materials, concepts and processes.
Education
2006 MFA, Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK
2002 BA, Chungan University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 Vertical Sea-red, Seoul Art Space, Hongeun, Seoul, Korea
2010 Contemplative tension, Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2009 Super Rainbow, Jincheon Bell Museum, Jincheon, Korea
2008 Calmtension, Kimi Art, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2012 The Garden of Sense, Garden Five, Seoul, Korea
Nasi Campur, Taksu Gallery, Singapore
2011 no-map, Seoul Art Space, Hongeun, Seoul, Korea
2010 Lack of Electricity II, Space Can, Seoul, Korea
2009 Seogyo Nanjang 2009, Gallery Sangsang Madang, Seoul, Korea
No..., Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, Korea
Against the Sculptural, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Goyang Open Studio Part 2,
The National Art Studio, Goyang, Korea
STEEL LAND: Mullae Faction Project, Future Text, Seoul, Korea
Propose 7 (vol 4), Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
VISTAS, Incheon International Digital Art Festival (INDAF09),
Incheon, Korea
TWO+, Chongwoon Choi, Jae eon Byun Duet exhibition, EVE
Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Exciting Art Museum: Meeting Kinetic Art, Gyeongnam Art
Museum, Changwon, Korea
The Game for Respect, Seogyo Sixty 2009,
Gallery Sangsang Madang, Seoul, Korea
2008 4482, Barge House, Oxo Tower Wharf, London, UK
The Fascination for Life, Gallery LVS, Seoul, Korea
Chongwoon Choi, Yeongsik KimDuetexhibition, Supex Hall,
Kaist, Seoul, Korea
2007 Heavenly Garden, Kimi Art, Seoul, Korea
HOT, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London, UK
LOST&FOUND, The Brick Lane Gallery, London, UK
Awards and Residencies
2009 NArT Fellowship, Seoul Foundation for the Arts & Culture
2011 Seoul Art Space HONGEUN, 1st Artist (Long term), Seoul, Korea
2010 SongEun Art Award, SongEun ArtSpace
2009–2010 Seoul City Nanji Art Studio, 4th Artist (Long term),
Seoul, Korea
2008–2009 National Goyang Art Studio, 5th Artist (Long term),
Goyang, Korea
2008 Arts Council Korea
Han Debbie
Battle of Conception, 2004–2010,
Ceramic celadon,
33 × 15 × 16 cm each
(32 heads and 2 tables each
measuring 200 × 400 cm)
I have been deeply drawn to the issue of how
human experiences are shaped and defined
in contemporary culture. My sculpture and
photo series explore the theme of
female imagery as a means to investigate
contemporary cultural dynamics and global
social relations. As the world draws closer
together in our current cultural climate,
there is greater urgency than ever before to
find ways to understand and acknowledge
the diversities and differences existing at
all levels of human life. My work serves to
engage in a deeper forum regarding identity,
perception, and culturalisation, all of which
I believe shape our awareness of who we
are and of the world. I have been attempting
to create a kind of visual language that not
only carries on postmodern concerns but
simultaneously embraces past legacies as a
new vision of our future.
The Battle of Conception is a sculpture
installation consisting of 32 heads staged
like a chess game on a large table. A group
of Venus busts with facial features depicting
diverse racial and ethnic characteristics
face another group of Venus busts with
obliterated facial features. My vision is to
revive the mystical color of ancient Korean
celadon, which is considered one of the
most authentic Korean beauties. This project
is the outcome of a six-year journey exploring
the techniques and traditions of celadon in
Korea. Each sculpture is manually sculpted
on the base of a slip cast. The installation
investigates the critical importance of human
conception as the key to defining ourselves
and others. Social conceptions and cultural
experiences contribute critically to shaping
our perception of reality. In understanding the
making of our awareness, we gain a deeper
understanding of ourselves and others.
Education
1999 MFA, Pratt Institute, New York, USA
1993 BA, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Solo exhibitions
2012 BEING: Debbie Han 1985–2011, Sungkok Art Museum,
Seoul, Korea
2011 The Eye of Perception, Santa Monica College Pete and Susan
Barrett Gallery, Santa Monica, USA
2009 Hybrid Graces, LA Contemporary, Los Angeles, USA
2007 Debbie Han, Galeria Punto, Valencia, Spain
2006 Visions of Beauty, Freddie Fong Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2004 Idealistic Oddity, Brain Factory, Seoul, Korea
1999 Sweet World, Steuben East Gallery, New York, USA
Group exhibitions
2012 Contemporary Perspectives, GoEun Photography Museum,
Busan, Korea
2011 Farrango 2011, mbf-kunstprojekte, Munich, Germany
2010 Everyday Realities, Santa Barbara Museum of Art,
Santa Barbara, USA
2009 Moon Generation, the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2008 The Border of Virtuality,
Hanjiyun Contemporary Space, Beijing, China
2007 Reality Crossings, Wilhelm Hack Museum,
Ludwigshafen, Germany
2006 Made in Korea, Gallerie Martine et Thibault de la Chartre,
Paris, France
2005 Reinventing Heritage, Hangaram Museum, Seoul, Korea
2004 Composition and Center, Hangaram Museum, Seoul, Korea
2003 Pillars, Leband Art Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2002 Santa Monica College Faculty Exhibition, Madison Gallery,
Santa Monica, USA
2001 KAFA Award for Visual Arts Exhibition, Korean Cultural Center
Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2000 ART2000: Applauding Revolutionary Talent, Millard Sheets
Gallery, Pomona, USA
1999 Apocalypse 1999, Williamsburg Art and Historical Center,
New York, USA
1997 Spirituality in Art, Freddie Fong Contemporary Art Gallery,
San Francisco, USA
1994 Downtown Lives, Downtown Arts Development Association,
Los Angeles, USA
2012 Britweek T4C Art Award, Los Angeles, USA
2009 The Sovereign Foundation Asian Art Prize, Hong Kong
2007 ARCUS Project, Artist-in-Residence, Ibaraki, Japan
2006 Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Artist-in-Residence,
Nebraska, USA
2001 Vermont Studio Center, Artist-in-Residence, Vermont, USA
1991–1993 UCLA Lilian Levinson Art Fellowship, Los Angeles, USA
Hong Euyoung
Haesung Villa, 2009,
Mixed media,
80 × 300 × 230 cm
Euyoung Hong experiments with various
concepts and materials through the idea
of the production, transformation and
deconstruction of space from both an
artistic and a socio-political perspective.
Education
2008–present PhD, Goldsmiths College, University of London
2000–2002 MA and MFA, University of Iowa, USA
1996 Summer Programme, Stanford University, USA
1994–1998 BFA, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea
Born in 1975, she is interested in establishing
a connection between sculptural space
and contemporary global urbanism,
particularly in terms of the patterns of
constructive and destructive movement
and the formation of space, in the process
of urbanisation in South Korea. Hong’s
sculptural work explores the ways in which
our life is visualised and environments are
constructed through the condensed and
displaced logic of space; this provides a new
understanding of the politics of unevenness
and its relation to the movement and
transformation of space. By looking at some
recent cases of forced eviction and urban
migration in South Korea, her work questions
the meaning and function of space and the
transformation of the concept of dwelling
from the place of permanent residence as a
shelter or protection to a means of producing
and destroying a social space.
Solo exhibitions
2011 Fragmented Space, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art,
Gyeonggi, Korea
2007 Fragments, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP),
New York, USA
2006 Fragments, Gallery HYUNDAI – Window Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2004 The Wall, Gallery IHN, Seoul, Korea
2002 Island, Eve Drewelowe Gallery, University of Iowa, USA
She is currently completing her PhD at
Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Group exhibitions
2012 Korean Eye: Energy and Matter, the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2011 The Object of Life, Pohang Museum of Steel Art, Pohang, Korea
2010 Youngeun Museum 10 th Anniversary Exhibition: Remind,
Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeonggi, Korea
2009 Against the sculptural: Three-dimensions of Uncertainty, Seoul
Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Between the Border, Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, Korea
2005 Scene of Reflection 11, Ewha Womans University Museum of
Art, Seoul, Korea
Fragments, Todmodern Mills Heritage Museum and Art Centre,
Toronto, Canada
Intelligence and Sensitivity in the 21st Century, Sejong Center
Museum of Fine Arts, Seoul, Korea
2002 Midwest Ticket, Gallery 119, Chicago, USA
KAF 2002: Euyoung Hong, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
2010 Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Artist in Residence
Programme, Gyeonggi, Korea
2009 National Museum of Contemporary Art,
Changdong Studio, Seoul, Korea
2007 International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York, USA
2011 Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, Grant for Distinguished Art
Project, Gyeonggi, Korea
2006 Second Prize, International Competition for Young Sculptors,
Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, Italy
2001–2002 Paula Patton Graham Scholarship, University of Iowa, USA
Collections
Global Building, Seoul, Korea
University of Iowa Thesis Archives, Iowa, USA
International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York, USA
The David Roberts Collection, London, UK
Hong Seung Hee
Der Zwang zur Tiefe #2, 2007,
Mixed media, installation and photography,
133 × 130 cm
133 × 115 cm
125 × 176 cm
When a book is picked up from a table
covered with dust, it leaves a trace of time,
and has me recognise the presence of an
object like a photogram. At the same time,
it gives me an insight into its true nature and
physical properties. My work’s motif comes
from Patrick Süskind’s short story Der Zwang
zur Tiefe (Force to Depth). In it, a young
female painter commits suicide as she was
told by a critic her work had no depth.
In the story depth can be interpreted in many
ways. It has many variations: spatial depth,
psychological depth, depth as a concept,
depth as meaning, and visual depth. For
me, depth is forced or coercive in space,
staged by projecting emotion and memory
on to objects. I raise an intentional sense
of gravity by depriving the solid physical
characteristics of a wall or desk. Their
sunken appearance, and their creases, are
thus represented as ‘a forced depth’, in a
direct and tactile manner.
I create artificial creases with clay then make
their forms in a cast. I complete them in
polyester and then take a picture. The reason
I photograph them is to chronicle a moment
in a created space as I intend it. What I
intend is a moment a man passes by a clock,
an umbrella falls, or the wind enters through a
window. In my black-and-white photographs
are motifs expressing a feeling I experienced,
and a memory shared by viewers.
If one stands up from a sofa, creases
appear in it, but soon disappear. I represent
situations of unintentional moments made
by imagination that reflect everyday scenes.
Black-and-white photographs are a medium
to express situations from the past.
Education
2009 Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, Akademie
Stipendium, Stuttgart, Germany
2001 Kaywon school of Art and Design, Photographic Art, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 Into Drawing 16, SOMA Drawing Center, Seoul, Korea
2010 Der Zwang zur Tiefe, Space Bandee, Busan, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 Art Edition 2011, Parkryusook Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Urban Landscape, Parkryusook Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2010 Korea Tomorrow, SETEC, Seoul, Korea
Different View, GALLERY FORM, Busan, Korea
2009 ART. FAIR 21, EXPO XXI COLOGNE, Cologne, Germany
WinWin2009 ‘Indipating’,
Horvath & Partners, Stuttgart, Germany
Studierende der Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart,
Künstlerbund e.V., Stuttgart, Germany
Im Mäzen der Maler, Karlskasene, Ludwigsburg, Germany
Weldekunstpreis2009, Welde Galerie, Plankstadt, Germany
2008 Schoewel Preis für Künstlerische Fotografie 2008,
Kunstakademie Halle, Stuttgart, Germany
Kunst Nacht, Unternehmen Kunst Galerie, Landshut, Germany
GVS-Förderpreis Junge Künstler2008,
Gas Versorgung Süddeutschland, Stuttgart, Germany
Frische Kunst – made in Stuttgart,
Galerie Z, Stuttgart, Germany
Collection
GVS-Gas Versorgung Süddeutschland, Stuttgart, Germany
Awards
SOMA Drawing Center Archive
WeldeKunstpreis, Best 30 Artist, Weldebraeu, Plankstadt, Germany
Akademie Preis 2008, Stuttgart, Germany
Hong Soo-Yeon
Acrobats #6, 2011,
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas,
141 × 11 × 3.5 cm
The artist’s work is futuristic yet it is not
about new worlds, but about salvaging
what’s left. She brings shapes and forms
together that are seemingly irreconcilable.
Education
1995 MFA, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, USA
1990 BFA, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea
Acrobats #4, 2012,
130 × 80 × 3.5 cm
Harmony, equilibrium and gravitas define her
aesthetics. There is no postmodern humour
but instead a sombre and elegant sense of
simplicity in her artistic practice.
Solo exhibitions
2011 Ryu Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2010 Plant Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2009 Artwall Gallery – Shinsegye Dept., Seoul, Korea
2007 Bundo Gallery, Daegu, Korea
2005 Gallery IHN, Seoul, Korea
2003 White Wall Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2002 Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Shadow of Winter #1, 2010,
116 × 152 × 4 cm
Shadow of Winter #2, 2010,
116 × 152 × 4 cm
Still Life in Space #2, 2010,
110 × 210 × 4 cm
Soo-Yeon is not a political artist, and there
is in her work a profound, limpid awareness
of the world. She neither withdraws nor
confronts. She takes the most casual
shapes, forms, images and puts them in a
relationship with each other that is neither
arbitrary nor problematic.
Several shapes reappear in different sizes
and configurations in Soo-Yeon’s work. And
each time there is a sense of déja vu, and
something added or taken away. The feeling
of harmony and belonging and rightness
seem more than the apparent simplicity of
the painting can bear.
Group exhibitions
2012 Gefäße, Stiftung Zollverein, Essen, Germany
2011 A pleasure with dear friends!, Posco Art Museum, Seoul, Korea
2009 Wonderful Pictures, Ilmin Museum, Seoul, Korea
2007 MoA Picks: reminiscing the medium-a ‘post-’ syndrome, MoA,
Seoul, Korea
2006 Sooyeon Hong & Yi, Hwan Kwon,
Paik Hae Young Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2005 Blue, Gana Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2004 Flower Flows Flowery, Artinus Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2003 Pronto, C/O, Milan, Italy
2002 Surface, Chun Gallery Seoul, Korea
2001 New York Academy of Art’s Annual Benefit Art Auction,
New York, USA
2000 NY Independent Art Fair’ New York, USA
Collections
The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea
Museum of Art, Seoul National University, Korea
Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Posco Center,Seoul&Gwangyang, Korea
Samsung Main Building, Seoul, Korea
Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Shaghai, China
Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Netherlands, Hague, Netherlands
Embassy of the Republic of Korea in India, New Delhi, India
Haevichi Hotel, Jeju, Korea
Novotel Daegu City Centre. Daegu, Korea
Bobath Memorial Hospital & The Heritage, Bundang, Korea
Handsome Co.Ltd., Seoul, Korea
Shinsegae Co.Ltd., Seoul, Korea
Kogas Marine Co.,Ltd, Incheon, Korea
Awards
2011 Opekta Studio Residency, Cologne, Germany
2009 Artist Sponsorship of Visual Arts,
Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Korea
2002–2003 Chang-dong Art Studio – Residency Program, Seoul, Korea
Hong Sung-Chul
String Mirror_eye_2377, 2009,
Print on elastic string, steel frame,
102 × 80 × 14 cm
Mirror_hand_0514, 2007,
102 × 80 × 14 cm
String Mirror_IMG_7252, 7258, 2006
Print on string,
138 × 106 × 15 cm (2 pieces)
String_hands_0246, 2011,
120 × 200 × 15 cm
Using various media and modern technology,
Hong Sung-Chul, born in 1969, prompts
interaction and performance from his
viewers. Communicating the deep desire
for human contact within society, his works
never fully reveal themselves initially and
exude a ghostly quality whereby the visual
sense is questioned. Spectators must
abandon reliance on their eyes alone and
use their bodies and voices to prompt
co-operation with the work. Stripping
away the isolating experience traditionally
encountered within art galleries, Hong
initiates a dialogue with and between
viewers, instilling the sense of community
prized in Korean culture.
Hong’s current body of work revives his
string concept – a visual representation of
what ties humans together from the earliest
stage of life – the umbilical cord. These
strings, upon which an image is printed, are
staggered in his works and interlace
to reveal a final representation – one of
support or loneliness.
Education
2001 MFA, California Institute of the Arts, USA
Solo exhibitions
2012 Solid but Fluid, HADA Contemporary, London, UK
2011 Solid but Fluid, Gallery Ihn, Seoul, Korea
Les mains déFILent Les yeux FILent, Galerie Orem, Paris, France
2010 Les mains déFILent Les yeux FILent, Galerie Orem, Paris, France
Solid but Fluid, YHD Projects, Seoul, Korea
2008 Anxiety and dynamics of incompleteness, Kring, Seoul, Korea
2007 Perceptual Mirror, Gallery Ihn, Seoul, Korea
Youngeun Artist Relay,
Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwanjou, Korea
2002 RGB show_Green, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2001 String Tongue, CalArts, Los Angeles, USA
2000 White Cube, CalArts, Los Angeles, USA
Group exhibitions
2012 Temporal Being & On Manner of Forming,
Edwin’s Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia
2011 The Senses ; Interactive Perception,
HADA Contemporary, London, UK
Korean Collective den Haag 2011, Galerie Noordeinde,
The Hague, Netherlands
Double Democracy, artGwangju, Korea
Korean Collective Basel 2011, Hall 33, Basel, Switzerland
2010 Korea tomorrow, SETEC, Seoul, Korea
Korean Collective London 2010, Albemarle Gallery, London, UK
Hong sungdo – Hong Sungchul, Erhard Witzel Gallery,
Wiesbaden, Germany
Remind, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art,
Gwangju, Korea
Man Ray & His Heritage, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2009 The Magic of Photography, Hanmi Photo Museum, Seoul, Korea
Shooting Image, KOEX, Seoul, Korea
Varied Space, Andy’s Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2008 Artists, what is science for you?, KAIST, Daejeon, Korea
Contemporary Korean Photographs 1948–2008,
MOCA, Gwacheon, Korea
Your Mind’s Eye: Digital Spectrum,
Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
From Korea in Beijing, Art Seasons Gallery, Beijing, China
2007 Mutual Induction, KTF Gallery, Seoul
Cool Bits, Sun Contemporary, Seoul
Text in Bodyscape, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul
Look & See, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul
Je Baak
The Structure of #1, #2, #3, #4, 2010,
Installation,
46" or 51" TV
Je Baak’s artistic practice centres on his
spiritual practice of Zen Buddhism. The
object or subject of attention is constantly
shifted, sometimes deleted, to prompt the
viewer to experience familiar scenes from
altered perspectives. Transforming the
serious into the comical, the familiar into
the uncomfortable and the spectacular
into the empty, Baak, born in 1978, forces
viewers into an introspection, developing
‘inward eye’ whereby self-realisation and
ultimately enlightenment are attained.
Education
2008–2010 MA, Royal College of Art, London, UK
1998–2003 BFA, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 Gong, Soomdo, Seoul, Korea
2010 Degree Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2009 Music + Art + Performance Project, ‘On the Edge of Life’,
Bath International Music Festival, Bath, UK
2002 Degree show Free Falling, Lee Sang,
Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 More than Tastes, Art Space Hue, Seoul, Korea
Point against Point, Arti et Amicitae, Amsterdam, Holland
2010 The Garden which has two roads never meet each other,
Museum of Art, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
The Plaza Principle, The Leeds Shopping Plaza, Leeds, UK
Wonder Room, Selfridges, London, UK
Akwaaba Astronomy, Launchpad City,
Science Museum, London, UK
Present from the past, Korean Cultural Centre, London, UK
4482, Barge House, Oxo Tour, London, UK
Wrong Love, A Foundation, Liverpool, UK
2009 Work in Progress Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
The Cube, Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, London, UK
Cross Fields, Korean Cultural Centre, London, UK
Acoustic Images 2009, 29 Thurloe Place, London, UK
Awards
2010 Chris Ganrham Memorial Award, Royal College of Art 2010
The Grand Prize, Joongang Fine Arts Prize 2010
2009 International Student Bursary, Royal College of Art
2008 Short listed, Mangroup Photography Awards
2002 Tuition scholarship, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Jung Seung
Chair II (essaie II), 2007,
Installation,
Dimensions variable
Jung Seung’s absurd machines act as
mirrors reflecting human nature. They both
lack and have an excess of rationality. They
take the same path as modern reason has
taken. Reason is not always impartial and
transparent but is intertwined with desire and
power. Born in 1976, Jung sees machines
as deformed and having lost their original
function. In such deformation, however, there
is no specific purpose. Like modern art, they
have ‘purposfullnes without purpose’. They
unveil concealed irrationality in a capitalistic
society where an act of production is not
for humans but for production’s sake itself.
To discover any moment of liberation or
oppression in this irrationality depends on
the viewer.
Education
2006 DNSEP, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Paris-Cergy, France 2004 DNAP, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Paris-Cergy, France Solo exhibitions
2011 Idea Of Complex part II, b’ONE Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2009 Idea Of Complex , Cheonggae Art Studio Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2009 Evolution Of Machine, Brain Factory, Seoul, Korea
2008 The Everyday Broken Into Pieces, Kunstdoc Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2012 Korean Eye, the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2011 Bad Romanticism, Arko art Center, Seoul, Korea
Multi-sensory, Sabina Museum, Seoul, Korea
Taehwa-river Eco Art Festival, Ulsan, Korea
Up and Comers, Total Museum of Contemporary Art,
Seoul, Korea
2010 Pusan Biennale, Pusan, Seoul, Korea
2009 Against the Sculptural, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Variety, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
2008 Gana Art 25th Anniversary Exhibition,
Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea
Changwon Asian Art Festival, Changwon, Korea
Funny Painting Funny Sculpture, Sejul Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Hongjecheon Project organized by Kunstdoc Gallery,
Seoul, Korea
A Piece Of A Piece, IASK Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2007 Mutual Induction, KTF Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Shinsegae gallery, Gwangju, Korea
2006 L’APOSTROPH, organized by ENSAPC, Pontoise, France
2011 OMI Art residency program, NY, USA
2010 Gumcheon Art Factory, Seoul, Korea
2009 Cheonggae Art Studio, Seoul, Korea
2008 Cross Nation Ensemble(sculpture project), Gwalior, India
Joongang Art Competition, Seoul, Korea
Selected as a ‘ New Artist ’ by the National Cultural Council
2007 IASK Changdong National Art Studio, Korea
Shinsegae Art Award, Gwanjou, Korea
Kang Hyung Koo
Theresa, 2011,
Oil on aluminium,
240 × 240 cm
Hyung Koo Kang, born in 1954, is a hyperrealist artist. Rather than merely depicting
famous celebrities, he uses contemporary
representations of his subjects, such as
from film, and reinvents them using exquisite
craftsmanship and a variety of media,
including airbrushing, nails, drills, q-tips,
toothpicks and erasers. Rather than unveiling
reality as it is, Kang creates a potential
reality using his hyperrealistic manner. The
figures of the past that he re-fashions into
contemporary images form an emotional bond
with viewers through an exchange of gazes.
The most unique characteristic in Kang’s
work is the fact that he captures faces
in a way that cameras cannot. Kang
describes his works as ‘a fabrication’.
Sometimes his exaggerated or distorted
works are demonstrative of his strict
rejection to drawing things the way they
are. Paradoxically, however, he draws every
facial hair and wrinkle that we normally do
not notice. As Kang started working with
aluminium, he thought about moving and
changing pictures. The notable aspect about
a work in aluminium is that it can appear and
feel different depending on the surrounding
space, light and time. In addition, the work
is perceived differently by its audience
according to the shift in lighting and position.
Education
BFA Chungang University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 The Burning Gaze, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
2010 FACE TO FACE, Arario Gallery, Beijing, China
Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwanjou, Korea
2009 Arario Gallery, New York, USA
2007 The Gaze, Arario Gallery, Cheonan, Korea
2006 Lotte Art Gallery, Busan, Gwanjou, Korea
2005 Gwanjou Art Museum, Gwanjou, Korea
2004 Sang Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Sejong Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
2003 Face, Face, Faces… as caricature by Kang, Hyung Koo,
Sejong Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
2002 Samsung Plaza Gallery, Bundang, Korea Sejong Arts Center,
Seoul, Korea
2001 Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Chosun-ilbo Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Samsung Plaza Gallery, Bundang, Korea
Group exhibitions
2010 Arario Gallery, Seoul & Cheonan, Korea
2009 Art in Super Star, Seoul Art Center, Seoul, Korea
Korean Eye; Moon Generation, SC First Bank, Seoul, Korea;
the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
Grand Opening of Shinsegae Centum City,
Shinsegae Centum City, Busan, Korea
2006 raw, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
The Picture Like Photograph, The Photograph Like Picture,
Zandari Musuem, Seoul, Korea
2005 Face, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwanjou, Korea
Father, Gail Art Museum, Seoul, Korea
Memory of Nature, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2004 Existence and Illusion, Gwanjou Art Museum, Gwanjou, Korea
2003 Face, Express, Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, Korea
Exploration of Light and Color, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
2002 Self-portraits of Korea, Sejong Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Passion and the After, Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea
Collections
The Frank Cohen Collection, FC MOCA, Korea
Jimmy Carter Center, Atlanta, USA
PEAK6 Investment, Chicago, USA
Gwanjou Art Museum, Gwanjou, Korea
The Republic of Korea National Red Cross, Seoul, Korea
Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea
The Amore Museum, Yongin, Korea
Federation of Korean Trade Union, Seoul, Korea
Gamsil Olympic Main Stadium, Seoul, Korea
Son Ki-Jeong Memorial Foundation, Korea
Arario Gallery, Cheonan, Korea
Kim Byoungho
Soft Crash, 2011,
Aluminum, piezo, arduino,
330 × 330 × 165 cm
Since 1999 Byoungho Kim has been
expanding his unique practice of sound
sculpture and sound installation. The
artist designs electrical circuits which
is inserted into sculptures made of
aluminium, steel and other types of metal,
producing shortwave or electrical sounds.
In Byoungho Kim’s major works thin narrow
tubes usually protrude from a heavy solid
central body, bending or spreading out
in all directions or sometimes just in one
direction. The bundles of tubes that stretch
out evoke a sense of movement. This is
stressed even more by the metallic material
and the smooth surface finishing. The
components designed by the artist are
exquisitely manufactured to fit an industrial
standard system according to the project
plan, and in cases where the works need to
be painted, they are commercially treated.
The artist integrates chips within electrical
components in the central core of the
works, which produce electrical vibrations
and sound without beat. The sound is
designed to create the illusion that it is
emanating from the tubes.
The artist links his work with energy, desire
and fantasy. The invisible flow of matter
in the work is related to the energy that
gives off a sense of movement to the work.
Despite the emphasis on the hard surface,
the flowing form and the production of
sound accumulate to showing a certain
still form of energy that flows. In this
exhibition, the energy emitted from the
tubes stretches out with a clearer sense
of direction, and the sound-wrapped
sculpture enforces a sense of formless
space dominated by energy.
Education
2004 MS, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 A System, Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2010 Invisible Object, Soma Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2009 Two Silences, Gastatelier der Stadt Frankfurt-am-Main,
Germany & National Art
Studio Goyang, Korea
2008 Assembled Fantasy, Weibang Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2012 Changwon Sculpture Biennale, Totland, Changwon, Korea
TINA B. Contemporary Art Festival, Prague, Czech Republic
Jing’an International Sculpture Project,
Jing’an Sculpture Park, Shanghai, China
Korean Eye, the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
Artists with Arario 2012, Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2011 Ceramic Art & Technology, Hangaram Museum,
Seoul Arts Centre, Seoul, Korea
Moving Museum 2, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2010 2nd Incheon International Digital Art Festival,
Tomorrow City, Songdo, Korea
The Gate, Boutique Monaco Museum, Seoul, Korea
Residence Parade, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, Korea
2009 No, Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, Korea
Inaugural exhibition for Melanie Rio Gallery,
Melanie Rio Gallery, Nantes, France
2008 Seoul Design Olympiad ‘Design is Air’,
Olympic Main Stadium, Seoul, Korea
Asia Art Network , KEPCO Plaza Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2007 Mixed and Matched, Bitforms Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2006 Who’s Who, Hyundai Department Store Sky Dome, Seoul, Korea
Collections
Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
Melanie Rio Galerie, Nantes, France
Art Bank of National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
HeungKuk Life Insurance, Seoul, Korea
2009–2010 4th Artist in Nanji Art Studio, Seoul Museum of Art, Korea
2008–2009 Kulturamt Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
2009 SOMA Drawing Center Archive Artist
Dorkbot demonstration, National Art Studio, Goyang, Korea
Artist Talk in Kunsthochschule Kassel, Kassel, Germany
Artist Talk in INM-Institute for New Media,
Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
Public Workshop (with Olaf Val) in 3rd Seoul International
Media Art Biennale, Korea
Kim Dong Yoon
Composites, 2009,
C-type,
100 × 75 cm
Dome, 2009,
C-type,
100 × 75 cm
Clibing Cage, 2009,
C-type,
100 × 75 cm
Hays, 2009,
C-type,
100 × 75 cm
Caged Garbage, 2009,
C-type,
100 × 75 cm
‘It takes all the running you can do, to keep
in the same place.’ From Lewis Carroll’s
Through the Looking Glass and what Alice
found there, the term ‘Red Queen’s effect’ is
an evolutionary hypothesis. In this excessive,
globalised society where we are exposed to the
multi culture which brings endless questions
of identity, we have to compete harder
and harder to maintain the current status.
Through this work, my concern is focused
on the individual’s position in this
circumstance. Having a constant struggling
life, I doubt the human’s ability to retain
all those endless events happened. So I
explored the edge of the unstable memories
from direct/indirect experiences.
The idea of selecting objects and places
in this series Memory result from profound
alteration of awareness. From those nonplaces such as the playground, roundabout,
park, I find the latent memories what people
have in mind. Personal experiences, like living
in complete different environments such as
Arizona, London and Seoul, seem imminent in
circumstances of making the image. Through
this project, it is a ‘when’ where I want to go
back, not just a ‘where’. This is visualised by
the many layers which trace the viewer’s
memory that have been erased like palimpsest.
‘By ‘stacking’ each of the images, an
‘integrated spectacle’ is created and the
circumstances are compressed.’
This ‘compressing’ freezes the moment
I capture and this ‘compressing’ intervenes
all the indexes from the single layer. Also,
the harmonised relation between artificial
and natural aspects of objects and
surrounding circumstances accelerates
this creating a spectacle.
Education
2012 Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
2009 BA, London College of Communication, University of the Arts,
London, UK
2006 University to Seoul National University
Group exhibitions
2012 Rhubarb – The Gathering at Diemar, Noble Gallery, London, UK
2011 A DEVICE, Mokspace, London, UK
Light/Touch, Upper Street Gallery, London, UK
14th Japan Media Arts Festival,
The National Art Centre, Tokyo, Japan
Bologna Art First 2011, Bologna Exhibition Centre, Bologna, Italy
2010 Academy Meets Photokina 2010,
Kölnmesse, Cologne, Germany
Fresh Faced and Wild Eyed 2010,
The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK
2009 Paris Photo 2009, Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France
New Sensations 2009, A Foundation, London, UK
Starting with a Photograph – An Exhibition of Saatchi Online
Artists, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, UK
Crossfields, Korean Cultural Centre, London, UK
Awards
2011 Jury Recommended Work of Art Division:
The 14th Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo, Japan
2010 Shortlisted for New York Photo Festival 2010:
General Fine Art, New York, USA
Finalist of Fresh Faced and Wild eyed: Annual Graduates
Exhibition of The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK
2009 Finalist of New Sensations: A Channel 4 Prize for Saatchi Online
UK 2009 Graduates, London, UK
Kim Hyuen Jun
ART no, 2007,
Cardboard,
40 × 30 × 130 cm
CE, 2007,
Cardboard,
Private collection,
68 × 20 × 50 cm
KING, 2009/01,
Cardboard,
Private collection,
50 × 20 × 55 cm
The Side up, 2009,
Cardboard,
Private collection,
75 × 65 × 83 cm
Fragile, 2008,
Cardboard,
Private collection,
94 × 70 × 102 cm
Kim Hyuen Jun’s works centre on value
creation within art and society. Kim
questions contemporary notions of value
in a commoditised society by focusing
purely on the immaterial – packaging –
that which is frequently gifted in society
and regularly discarded. Dotted with bar
codes, address labels and trademarks,
this protective cardboard is brought into
being by the artist: a chair, a shoe, and at
times a household pet such as a dog begin
to take shape. These surreal objects and
beings come to embody the confusion and
conflict in our modern consumerist society.
Kim believes consumerism to be one of the
most important changes in modern society.
If society is bound by its consumerist
products, then is it effectively freed by its
counterpart? He deconstructs notions of
the immaterial and draws attention to the
decidedly arbitrary assignments of value.
Education
2006 MFA, Dongguk University, Korea
2004 BFA, Dongguk University, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2009 Present or Present, Skape Gallery, Seoul
2007 The light thing, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 THE KOREAN MIRACLE: A CULTURAL EVOLUTION, Asia
House, London, UK
Summer Show, HADA Contemporary, London, UK
2010 Artist’s production, Seoul Museum of art, Seoul, Korea
Save the Earth, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
The Beginning of Love, Ryuhwarang, Seoul, Korea
Greenlovebrown, green & brown, Seoul, Korea
Fantastic Gardens, Sungsan Arts Hall, Choung Won, Korea
Chamber of Secrets, ART2021, Seoul, Korea
2009 Bad Boys Here and Now, Gyeonggi Museum of Art, Korea
City-net Asia, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Moving Art, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2008 Wonder Brand, GANAART FORUMSPACE, Seoul, Korea
Fictional Reality, Gallery Skape, Seoul, Korea
Up to the Minute, Korea Art Center, Busan, Korea
[Propose 7 vol.3], Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
The Battle of Taste, Gallery Sangsang Madang, Seoul, Korea
2007 The 29th Joongang Fine Arts Prize, Hangaram Museum, Seoul
Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
2006 The Jackpot, Gallery Sinhan, Seoul, Korea
Wish List, Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2005 Space Cocktail, Gallery Space Cell, Seoul, Korea
Passages in Modern Sculpture, Ulsan Arts Center, Ulsan, Korea
2004 The Road, Gallery Moro, Seoul, Korea
Flying, Gallery My Art, Seoul, Korea
Sangsang Relay in Club, No.5 Gallery Gwanjou Biennale,
Gwanjou, Korea
Koo Sungsoo
Tour Bus, 2005,
C Print,
180 × 220 cm
Comics, 2005,
C Print,
180 × 220 cm
Korean Restaurant, 2005,
C Print,
180 × 220 cm
It is difficult to express the reality of
accepting Western culture from a Korean
perspective as you can only take pictures
of what you really see and what is actually
there in front of you. It is hard to look at the
Statue of Liberty from the roof of a motel, a
Christmas tree in the background of a white
motel and a Korean traditional building next
to each other. At last, I realised that the way
to transform the actual landscape into art
was to look and enjoy the landscape in a
positive way.
It was interesting to work on pictures
showing a creative interpretation of when
two different cultures clash. Korean
children play with blonde dolls, pictures
of famous tourist sights abound in most
arcades and you will see people wearing
Korean traditional dress at the most
Westernized wedding hall. It is also common
to see karaoke rooms decorated with
an international theme, artists drawing
US soldiers as an Indian warrior wearing
traditional costume or fences for a
construction site covered with images of the
Mona Lisa or Millet’s paintings.
My work is mostly about visualising the
reality of Korea. Multi culture is made of
understanding different cultures in a positive
perspective rather than looking at them as a
fake landscape of culture.
Education
2004 PhD, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea
2002 Keimyung University, Korea
1998 Chungang University, Korea
1993 Kyungil University, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2012 Photogenic Drawing, Ilwoo Space, Seoul, Korea
2009 Living in Seoul, Galerie 89, Paris, France
2007 Magical Reality, Sarah Lee Artworks & Projects,
Los Angeles, USA
2001 From Wife, Amoon Art Center, Daegu, Korea
2000 Induscape, Daegu Culture Art Center, Korea
1999 Small Landscape, Daegu Culture Art Center, Korea
Group exhibitions
2012 Korean Eye, the Saatchi Gallery, London
2011 Man Ray’s Photography & His Heritage,
2009 Chaotic Harmony, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA
Photography Now China, Japan, Korea
SFMoMA, San Francisco, USA
2008 Light-some Recall, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas, USA
Good Morning Mr Namjun Beak ,
Korean Cultural Centre, London, UK
2007 Peppermint Candy, Contemporary Art from Korea,
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago, Chile/Museo
Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2005 Picturing Korean Vision & Visuality,
Ie-young Contemporary Art Museum, Korea
2004 Document, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2003 Photography, Historical Memory, Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2001 Jury Exhibition Sajinbipyung,
Beak Young Duk Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2000 Sexual Sociality and Access to the Body,
Daegu Culture Art Center, Korea
Collections
2010 Samsung Museum of Art Leeum, Seoul, Korea
2009 SFMoMA, San Francisco, USA
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, USA
2008 J.Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA
2007 Ocean Technology, Seoul, Korea
2005 National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea
2002 Photography Museum of Dong-gang) Young Wol, Korea
2000 Daegu Culture Art Center, Korea
Awards
2010 Ilwoo Photo Prize, Ilwoo Foundation, Seoul, Korea
2005 Daum Prize, Geonhi Art Foundation, Seoul, Korea
2001 Best Photographer of 2001, Sajinbipyung, Seoul, Korea
2000 Young Artist grant, Daegu Culture Art Center, Korea
Lee Gilwoo
Dancer in Nature, 2009,
Indian ink, soldering iron
and coating on Korean paper,
Private collection,
190 × 120 cm
Private collection,
190 × 120 cm
Irrelevant Answer, 2007,
Collection of Yashian Schauble,
120 × 95 cm
Private collection,
170 × 130 cm
Irrelevant Answer 6, 2007,
Indian ink soldering iron coating
on Korean paper 2007,
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Ciclitira,
120 × 95 cm
Gilwoo Lee, born in 1967, creates work
that is familiar, but fresh. He make use of
familiar images of well-known figures such
as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and
Andy Warhol in a similar manner to pop
art. However, he intentionally blurs the
individuality of his subjects. Gilwoo Lee
overlaps images to produce a tension within
his work. He combines two extremes in one
screen,creates a dual compositions in which
two separate worlds co-exist. The artist thus
questions how Eastern or Western identities
are expressed using complex cultural codes.
Gilwoo Lee’s work uses the repetitive
process of burning paper with a solderingiron, which is reminiscent of the ritual of
burning incense. The repetitive technique
instils the work with not just artistic value
but also a value derived from the laborious
making process undertaken. This artistic
labour is manifested in the beauty of the
sublime and shown as a way to find spiritual
awakening. Based on the doctrine of
transmigration of souls, which stipulates that
all life turns to ash after death and is born
again, the artist creates new images through
the process of burning paper.
The works of Gilwoo Lee begin as everyday
images and pose questions about the
encounter between Eastern and Western
cultures and the communication of tradition
and modernity.
Education
1998 MFA, Joongang University, Korea
1994 BFA, Joongang University, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2010 New York State of Mind, White Box Gallery, New York, USA
2009 Gallery Sun Contemporary, Seoul, Korea
2008 Irrelevant Answer, Gallery Moon, Beijing, China
2007 Extinction and Creation,
Gallery Sun Contemporary, Seoul, Korea
2006 Irrelevant Answer, Gallery Moon, Beijing, China
2005 Exhibition and Creation, Yeomhwang Art Gallery, Beijing, China
Group exhibitions
2011 The Variation, Gallery4walls, Seoul, Korea
2010 Changwon Asian Art Festival,
Sungsan Art Hall, Changwon, Korea
2007 Inaugural Exhibition of Gallery the K, Gallery the K, Seoul, Korea
The Best of the Best: 20 Korean Young Contemporary Artists,
Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea
No Bounds, Gallery Sun Contemporary, Seoul, Korea
Story in Korean Folk Painting, Gyeonggi Museum, Korea
Thermocline of Art New Asian Waves,
Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany
2006 The Beauty of Korea, Namgwan Art Museum, Seoul, Korea
China Exchange Exhibition to mark the World Cup,
Gyeonghyang Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Four Gates, Gallery Moon, Beijing, China
Contemplation in Paper, Pen, and Ink, Doll Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Lee Jaehyo
0121–1110=107041, 2007,
Wood (big cone pine),
520 × 520 × 520 cm 0121–1110=112034, 2012,
Wood (bamboo),
210 × 210 × 66 cm (x2)
Korean contemporary art has for some
decades revealed a special sensibility –
neither Chinese nor Japanese, but containing
elements that are reminiscent of both. Lee
Jaehyo’s work shows immense respect
for natural materials and also the will to
dominate what nature has provided.
Born in 1965, Lee Jaehyo’s contribution
displays a quality not usually associated with
artists from the Far East: a sly, sophisticated
wit. Many of his sculptures are also furniture –
couches, a chair, a table, a dish, and are
domestic items with an element of parody.
The world of the Western crafts, and
especially that part of it that descends from
the Arts and Crafts movement of the late
nineteenth century, has never expressed
much affection for things that seem to relate
too directly to the world of industry. Lee
Jaehyo has no such inhibition. Stainless steel
bolts and nails are part of his palette. These
industrial materials offer a myriad of small
light-reflecting forms against a dark surface.
Some of his most intriguing works in this
category make use of the forms of the
Western alphabet, all jumbled together. Lee
Jaehyo has a profound appreciation for the
inherent qualities of the medium he works in,
but he manipulates them too, with both skill
and purpose. He thus initiates a dialogue,
both with them and with us as spectators.
He is a playful artist and likes to juggle with
materials, to see what they can be made to
do. He sees the world in a slightly oblique
way and has a gift for turning the familiar
into something unfamiliar. What Lee Jaehyo
offers are opportunities for seeing the world
anew, with the kind of innocence of vision we
associate with child’s play.
Education
Solo exhibitions
2012 Cynthia-Reeves Contemporary, Brooklyn, New York, USA
2011 Albemarle Gallery, London, UK
Galeria Ethra, Mexico City, Mexico
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama, USA
2010 Albemarle Gallery, London, UK
Kwai Fung Hin Gallery, Hong Kong, China
Cynthia-Reeves Contemporary, New York, USA
2009 Ever Harvest Art Gallery, Taiwan
Gallery Keumsan, Japan
Albemarle Gallery, London, UK
2008 Cynthia-Reeves Contemporary, New York, USA
2007 Gallery Keumsan, Japan
2006 Gallery Marin, Korea
2005 Gallery Artside, Seoul, Korea
2003 Gallery Won, Korea
2001 Vermont Studio Center, USA
2000 Ilmin Museum of Art, Korea
Group exhibitions
2012 China International Gallery Exposition, Beijing, China
Design Days Dubai, UAE
2011 Moving Art Village, Nampo Art Museum, Korea
Hong Kong Art Fair 2011, Hong Kong, China
Art Paris 2011, Paris, France
2010 Taipei Art Fair, Taipei
Shanghai Art Fair, Shanghai, China
Collections
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea
Park Hyatt Hotel Shanghai, China
Osaka Contemporary Art Center of Japan
Grand Hyatt Hotel, Taiwan
Park Hyatt Hotel Washington, D,C., USA
Grand Hyatt Hotel Berlin, Germany
Industrial Bank, Taiwan
Park Hyatt Hotel Zurich, Switzerland
Awards
2008 Prize of Excellence, Olympic Landscape Sculpture Contest
2005 Prize of Excellence, Hyogo International Competition of Painting
2002 Sculpture in Woodland Award
2000 Kim Sae-Jung Young Artist Prize
1998 Grand Prize Winner, Osaka Triennial
1997 Grand Prize Winner, Invited Young Artist
Lee Kwang-Ho
Cactus No. 75, 2012,
Oil on canvas,
250 × 300 cm
Cactus No. 37, 2009,
Oil on canvas,
227.3 × 181.8 cm
Kwang-Ho Lee’s current cacti project uses
a similar production process to that of his
past work in portraiture. Lee first observes
his subject and photographs it, following this
he creates a sketch from re-observing the
subject. The artistic intervention generally
involves the process of thinking about
different ways the physical peculiarities
of the subject can be visually expressed.
For Lee, this entails a variety of methods
including scratching the canvas with a
knife, creating a unique texture with minimal
amount of paint, rubbing and scouring the
surface, all with the intent to ascribe different
parts of the canvas with noticeable levels of
physical delicacy (or roughness). Born in
1967, he displays the technical perfection of
a realist painter. The ‘sensual’ relationship
between the artist and the models portrayed
in his portraiture is carried over into his cacti
project. In the process of enlarging a small
cactus into a larger canvas, the canvas is
filled with a sensational or an animalistic
atmosphere.
A viewer looking at these paintings is faced
with the challenges of not only organising
the general structure of the works, but
also encountering the abundance of visual
stimuli each work presents. Therefore,
as spectators, we are only witnessing
the introduction of the adventurous
investigation directly undertaken by Lee
as to what is the raison d’être for painting.
This new perspective of our role as
indirect participants engaged in a deeper
investigation about the nature of painterly
representation, and of art itself, gives us
a clearer insight into what a painting of a
cactus can express about its own existence,
the time and place in which it dominates and
what it has to say about life. It is in this sense
that the cactus is united with the spectator’s
created vision.
Education
1994 BFA, Seoul National University, Korea
1999 MFA, Seoul National University, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 Touch, Johyun Gallery, Busan, Korea
2010 Touch, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2008 Daegu MBC, Gallery M, Daegu, Korea
2006 Inter-View in Changdong,
Changdong National Art Studio Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2003 Paintings with Annotations, Hanjeon Plaza Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2002 The Spy, Gallery Indeco, Seoul, Korea
2001 Gallery Indeco, Seoul, Korea
1996 Gallery Boda, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 Abstract it !, National Museum of Art Deoksugung, Seoul, Korea
2010 Defense Mechanism, TN Gallery, Beijing, China
The Lamp of the East, atelier aki, Seoul & Lalit Kala Akademi,
Chennai, India
Busan Biennale – Now Asian Artist, Citizen Hall, Busan, Korea
2009 Prague Biennale, Prague, Czech Republic
2008 Reality – Portraits, Zaha Museum, Seoul, Korea
2007 On Painting, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Video Killed the Painting Star,
Domus Artium, 2002 Salamanca, Spain
Con-terminal, National Museum of Contemporary Art,
Gwacheon, Korea
A Complex , Sunggok Art Museum, Seoul, Korea
Where Euclid Walked, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Charge Your Imagination, Gyunggi Museum of Art, Ansan, Korea
2006 Selected Artist Exhibition for the III edition of the Castellon
County Council International Painting Prize, Castellon, Spain
New Acquisitions, National Museum of Contemporary Art,
Gwacheon, Korea
Collections
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea
Gyunggi Museum of Art, Korea
Posco, Korea
2006 Selected Artists for the III International Painting Prize of the
Castellon County Council, Spain
Award of Excellence, Joongang Fine Art Prize, Seoul Arts
Center, Seoul, Korea
2005–2006 International Artist Studio Program, National Changdong
Art Studio, Korea
Lee Jiyen
Walking on Air- ver 2, 2012,
Pigment print, Mulasec, E 2/5,
180 × 140 cm
Wherever You Will Go, 2011,
Collage, Aluminum Panel,
Private collection,
280 × 480 cm
Above the Timberline, 2011,
Pigment print, collage, aluminum panel,
122 × 1164 cm
Life is compartmentalised – the subsistence
of existence makes it difficult to think
otherwise – from the blink of an eye, to
breathing, sleeping and waking, to ingesting
food and discharging waste, even so far as to
making noise. Perhaps the living body is merely
flesh that whittles away its own existence?
Education
2010 MFA Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
2005 BFA Hongik University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2012 Belt Final Selection, COEX, Seoul, Korea
2011 ‘Private Public’, Salon de H, Seoul, Korea
BELT 2011-Photo Semi Final, Yoo art space, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
Spoon Art Fair – Emerging Artist Special Exhibition,
Grand Hyatt Hotel, Hong Kong, China
Beijing Art Fair, Imazoo Gallery, Beijing, China
AHAK , Keumsan Gallery,
Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Hong Kong, China
Parallel world, Imazoo Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2011 KOREA TOMORROW – Womad Code,
Seoul Soka Art Center, Korea
Electronic Nostalgia, Art Space Loo, Seoul, Korea
Urban Landscape, Parkyusook Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2010 Collage of Memories, Soka Art Center, Beijing, China
AAF – Recent Graduate Exhibition, London, UK
Collections
2010 Goldsmiths College, University of London, collection, UK
Lewisham Hospital Collection, London, UK
Awards
2011 Shortlist Winner (Photography) BELT
Print/Photography/Media Art, KOREA PRINT PHOTOGRAPHY
PROMOTION ASSOCIATION
Lee Jonggeon
Bridge of Paradise, 2010,
Engraving on antique hardwood flooring,
243 × 304.8 × 8 cm
Jonggeon Lee has exhibited his work
internationally, including in a solo exhibition
at the Songeun Gallery in Seoul; in a twoperson exhibition at the Doosan Gallery in
New York; and in group exhibitions at Recess
in New York, the Dorsky Gallery in Long
Island City, the 808 Gallery in Boston, the
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
in Provincetown and the Kyeonggi Museum
of Modern Art in Ansan, Korea. He has also
been awarded several grants and residencies
such as the Emerging Artist Fellowship
from the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long
Island City, a Visual Arts Fellowship from
the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown,
and the Kumho Young Artist Award from
Kumho Museum in Seoul, Korea. He is
currently participating in the Special Editions
Residency Program at the Lower East Side
Printshop in New York.
Education
2010 MFA, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA
2007 MFA Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
2004 BFA, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2012 Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2011 Notes From In Between, Hudson D. Walker Gallery,
Provincetown, MA
2007 Extraction, Songeun Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 Casting Memories: Eight Annual AHL Foundation Visual Arts
Competition Winners’ Exhibition,
ArtGate Gallery, New York, USA
nowHere territories, Triangle Arts Association,
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Shift and Flow, Dorsky Gallery, Long Island City, USA
Nests, Shells, and Corners,
Meramec Contemporary Art Gallery, St. Louis, USA
2010 Open Studios, ISCP, International Studio & Curatorial Program,
Boston Young Contemporaries, 808 Gallery, Boston, USA
Brand New Bag, Recess Inc., New York, USA
2009 PYT (Pretty Young Thing), 235 Westminster St. Gallery,
Providence, USA
2008 Red Carpet, Changdong National Art Studio Gallery,
Seoul, Korea
2012 Special Editions Residency Program,
Lower East Side Printshop, New York, USA
The Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, USA
Grant, Arts Council Korea, Seoul, Korea
2011 Visual Arts Competition Winner, AHL Foundation, New York,
USA
International and National Residency Program,
Triangle Arts Association, Brooklyn, New York, USA
2010 ISCP, International Studio & Curatorial Program,
Emerging Artist Fellowship,
Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island, USA
2009 Awards of Excellence,
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA
Full Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, USA
2008 Changdong National Art Studio,
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
2007 Songeun Arts and Cultural Foundation Grant, Seoul, Korea
Lee Moonjoo
Cruise, 2009,
Acrylic on canvas,
195 × 360 cm
Closed Road, 2006,
Acrylic and photocollage on canvas,
191 × 270 cm
Detroit, Michigan, 2003,
Acrylic and photocopy on canvas,
115 × 152 cm
As early as 1998 Moonjoo Lee began
documentation with photographs and
paintings of areas under the urban renewal
scheme omnipresent in Seoul, her home
city, and its satellite towns. She continued
this practice later in the United States.
Documenting the transitory aspect of urban
space and its constant state of upheaval,
has been a key topic of her creative work, in
addition to the related social consequences
of this kind of large-scale redevelopment,
which, for a certain group of people, can often
mean exclusion and the loss of their homes.
Moonjoo Lee’s large-scale works depict
the continuing cycle of urban expansion,
construction, decay, demolition and
reconstruction from the artist’s perspective.
Her works always demand site-specific
research, which Lee carries out over a long
period of time. Her multi-panel pieces and
serial formats reveal an integrated vision
comprising panoramic perspectives of
specific sites where the past, present, and
future merge into one another. Lee brings
several places or different times together in
the form of painterly collages.
In Berlin Moonjoo Lee has tracked down
parts of the urban landscape in a state of
transition – for example, the site around
the O2-Arena close to Warschauer Straße;
and the Palace of the Republic, currently
being demolished – and has documented
them photographically over several
months. Those photographs which Lee
describes as ‘shadows of reality’ function
as source images for enlarged black and
white photocopies or silkscreen prints. Lee
arranges these on the canvas in a patchworklike way and then works over or supplements
through layers of brushwork.
By juxtaposing views of house ruins, new
structures, abandoned empty lots, and
construction debris on canvas, Moonjoo
Lee not only intends to show the concrete,
everyday space of our direct environment,
but also aims primarily to stimulate a
metaphorical understanding of this space
as one of the possibilities.
Education
2003 MFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, USA
1999 MFA, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2010Refugee, Hyundai Window Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2009 Cruise, Gallery Royal, Seoul, Korea
2008 Palast der Republik & O2 World, Gaain Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2006 Redevelopment Area 2,
National Changdong Art Studio Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2012 Korean Contemporary Figurative Painting,
Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2011 No.45 Kumho Young Artist, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
No Object Is an Island, Cranbrook Art Museum,
Bloomfield Hills, USA
2010 Residency Parade, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, Korea
2009 Slum Megapolis, Alternative Space Bandee, Busan, Korea
Souvenir, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany
2008 Rambling around B (two-person-show),
IAC Galerie, Berlin, Germany
Review of a Position, MK Galerie, Berlin, Germany
2007 Discovering Seoul, Gaain Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2006 KHAOS: Contemporary Art from Korea and France,
Gana Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2004 Inhale Exhale, Dukwon Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Conversions: Licorice, Bronx Council on the Arts,
Bronx, New York, USA
6595 Miles, Network Gallery, Cranbrook Art Museum,
Bloomfield Hills, USA
Collections
Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, USA
Daimler Chrysler, Troy, USA
Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, Korea
Residencies
2012 Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Germany
2009/2010 Studio Residency, Nanji Art Studio, Seoul, Korea
2008 Studio Residency, GlogauAIR, Berlin, Germany
2007/2008 Studio Residency, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
2005/2006 Studio Residency, Changdong Artist Studio, Seoul, Korea
2004 Studio Residency, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts,
Omaha, USA
Moon Beom
Secret Garden 253_pink, paynes grey, 2011,
Acrylics, oilstick on canvas,
194 × 259 cm
Secret Garden 251_black, gold, 2011,
Acrylics, oilstick on canvas,
194 × 259 cm
Born in 1955, Moon Beom is an artist whose
works ably transform both the traditional
and the modern. At once creating sculptures
that speak to a Western conceptual
artistic vocabulary or canvases of abstract
landscapes which recall the long tradition of
Korean figurative painting, Moon Beom is an
expert negotiator of the paradoxical.
His paintings, with large swathes of vibrant
primary colours, occur in an ambiguous time
and space. His objects within sculptures and
installations, rendered meaningless through
their appropriation, are both minimalist and
conceptual but undeniably precise and
beautiful. Resisting classification, Moon’s
works do not reflect conflict between a
nostalgic reverence of tradition and the
enthusiastic embrace of the modern. Rather,
they express the objective evaluation of
a post-modern world, one that builds,
appropriates and reflects on its present and
past in ways that speak wholly of the future.
Education
1982 MFA, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2007 Kim Foster Gallery, New York, USA
2004 Radom Landscapes, PKM Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2003 Kim Forster Gallery, New York, USA
1999 Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1997 Gallery Shilla, Teagu, Korea
1996 Gallery Bhak, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2009 Foregrounded, PKM Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2006 Terrain, Kim Foster Gallery, New York, USA
2006 Simply Beautiful, Centre PasquArt, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland
2005 The Diversity Show, curated by Betty Levin,
Credit Suisse First Boston, New York, USA
Le Flux , Galerie Lumen, Paris, France
2004 Paintings That Paint Themselves, Kresge Art Museum,
East Lansing, USA
2002 Inaugural Exhibition, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA
2001 Black & White, Kim Foster Gallery, New York, USA
1998 Spiritual- scapes, Generous Miracles Gallery, New York, USA
1996 Window Display Project, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea
1995 Red Mill Gallery, VSC, Vermont, USA
1994 Logos & Pathos, Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1993 Contemporary–Communication Art, Galerie Bhak, Seoul, Korea
1990 Nineties Artists of Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
1989 Kim Yong-Ik, Moon Beom, Hong Myung-Sup,
Space Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1988 Korean Contemporary Painting,
National Museum of History, Taipei
1987 Tail of Elephant, Kanagawa Gallery, Yokohama, Japan
1986 Korean Art – Old and New, City Hall, Kyoto, Japan
1985 Seoul 16 Young Artists, Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1984 Korean Art Now, City Museum, Taipei
1983 Contemporary Paper Works, Korea and Japan,
City Museum, Kyoto, Japan
1982 After Logicalness, Su Gallery, Taegu, Korea
1981 32e Salon de Jeune Peintre & Expression,
Grand Palais, Paris, France
Collections
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
Sonjae Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyungju, Korea
Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, Korea
Oh Jeong Il
Lover, 2009,
Acrylic on linen by a single hair brush,
91 × 42.5 cm
Braid, 2000,
Acrylic on canvas by a single hair brush,
Private collection,
53 × 33 cm
Braid, 2010,
Acrylic on canvas by a single hair brush,
91 × 52 cm
Born in 1972, Oh Jeong Il depicts hair-styles
with each hair meticulously, drawn one by one
with a single strand Korean brush on a black
background. Hair is the part of a human body
that captures the essence of the circulation
of energy between the living body and dead
material. The hair in his painting uses a visual
vocabulary to demonstrate the way individual
objects are interlinked with each other. To the
artist the black background presents a dark
space in which new life can be conceived.
Each strand and line is representative of
vitality created from that space.
The hair is, for him, a link that mediates human
beings with nature and a strand of hair
symbolises an individual human being with
self-regulating consciousness. Hair for him
means a field of circulating energy within
himself and society, materials and the universe.
Education
Solo exhibition
2003 Strange Forest, Gallery Sang, Seoul, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011–2012 2011 Sovereign Asian Art Prize – Singapore, Hong Kong,
Shanghai, China
2010 Forming Expressions – 3 Approaches to Beauty,
Sotheby’s Tel-aviv, Israel Beyond the Labor,
Art Forum New Gate, Seoul, Korea
2009 Re- interpreted Lee sang(a poet) by Contemporary Art,
Il Ju Art Center, Seoul, Korea
Next generation, Open Art Center, Seoul, Korea
Communication & Groping, Jeon Ju Art Museum, Jeon Ju, Korea
2008 Korea Now, Sotheby’s Tel-aviv, Israel
2007 New Acquisitions 2006, Seoul Museum of Art, Seou, Korea
Recto&Verso of Korean Hyper Realism, Gallery LM, Seoul, Korea
2006 G RI DA - Illusion/Disillusion, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Tuning - International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, Incheon
Culture & Arts Center, Incheon, Korea
2005 Brush hour, Space Ieum, Beijing, China
Waitan gallery, Shanghai, China
Sight at a Moment, Woo Rim Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2004 Young Realism, Gallery Artside, Seoul, Korea
2003 Uncanny, Gallery La Mer, Seoul, Korea
2000 Factory Art Festival, Blind Love, Factory of Sam pyo Foods,
Seoul, Korea
Korea Young Artists Biennale 2000,
Daegu Culture and Art Center, Korea
Contemporary art – Now · Next,
Kwan Hoon Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1999 MIXED & MEDIA , Cho Hyoung Gallery, Seoul, Korea
PASS WORD, Gallery Sang, Seoul, Korea
Painting the Inside, Jeon Won Gallery, Yangpyeong, Korea
The Way of Human relation, Gallery Artside, Seoul, Korea
Collection
Seoul Museum of Art
Shin Meekyoung
Translation-vase series, 2011,
Soap, pigment, fragrance, wooden crate
Shin Meekyoung’s Translation Series
reproduces the various forms and shapes
of ancient Chinese pottery using unusual
materials. When the artist locates a
historically significant relic or a vessel that
captures her interest, she creates a silicon
mould, pours melted soap in the mould and
waits for the soap to harden. Once the soap
has hardened to shape, she carves out the
inside and inlays the exterior with coloured
soap or draws patterns using natural dye.
This entire process utilises the same amount
of skill and effort as that of the original
creators. Just as pottery is glazed, her soap
replicas are coated with liquid soap before
being exhibited. The final works, which
are visually beautifuland perfumed, are
simultaneously classic and kitschy, real while
fake, solid yet unstable.
The term ‘translation’ uses by Shin in the title
of her work brings to mind the act of changing
or transferring. Like the word ‘translation’,
Shin’s works, when compared to the originals,
have changed in composition, have travelled
through time and culture, and have been
placed in a new context. By focusing on
the differences in culture and language that
occurs as a result of change in time and
space, the artist covers the subject of cross
penetration and spreading of cultures, as well
as the issue of originality and interpretation,
and copying versus reproduction.
Education
1998 MFA Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, UK
1993 MA, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
1990 BA, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2011 Translation, Haunch of Venison Gallery, London, UK
2009 Translation, Lefebvre & Fils Gallery, Paris, France
2008 Translation – MoA Project, Museum of Art, Seoul National
University, Seoul, Korea
2007 Translation, Mongin Art Centre, Seoul, Korea
Translation – Moon Jar, Korean Gallery, British Museum,
London, UK
2002 Translation, Tokyo Humanité Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Group exhibitions
2011 38°N SNOW SOUTH: KOREAN CONTEMPORARY ART,
Charlotte Lund Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
2010 Memories from the Past, LEEUM,
Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, Korea
Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary, the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
Present from the Past, Korean Cultural Centre, London, UK
2009 TEFAF, Maastricht 2009 Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2008 Asian Art Week in London, Imyu Project, London, UK
Art in Action, Waterparry House, Oxfordshire, UK
Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Armory Show, New York, USA
Meme Trackers, Song Zhuang Art Center, Beijing, China
2007 Beauty, Desire and Evanescence, Space DA, Beijing, China
2006 Looking through Glass, Asia House, London, UK
On, Cover Up, London, UK
Art Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Twenty One: New Work by Student,
Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK
2005 Telltale, Ewah Womans University Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2004 Interim Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK
1999 Fin de Siecle, Riverside Studios Gallery, London, UK
1998 Addressing the Century – 100 Years of Art & Fashion,
Hayward Gallery, London, UK
Summer Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK
1997 Korean Young Artist in London, Sackville Gallery, London, UK
2009 GMOMA, Kyoungki Do
2004 West Dean College, West Sussex, UK
2001 The 5th Galerie BHAK Contest of Young & Remarkable Artist,
Galerie BAHK, Seoul, Korea
1998 ACAVA98, The First Base Award, ACAVA London, UK
Sim Seung-Wook
Black Gravity, 2008,
Bronze,
180 × 110 × 110 cm
On Black Gravity and Construction / Deconstruction are the titles of my installation,
sculptural, and photographic works, as well
as the titles to two of the chapters of the
mindset writing series that is currently close
to being finalised. Introducing memories of
the past and everyday experiences into a
fictional environment consisting of similarly
fictional figures and objects, I have pieced
together 50 short stories that consist of an
intersecting tangle of imagination and reality. Education
2007 MFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
The Construction / De-construction series
originated from the content in chapter
six of the Mindset collection that I have
reinterpreted visually. To put it simply, I
have visually expressed the belief that
the standard and basis for differentiating
completeness and incompleteness do
not exist. From a broad perspective,
the conclusion drawn about the act of
completion only seems like a stubborn
assertion made artificially by people. Group exhibitions
2012 International Sculpture Festa 2012,
Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Beyond the Boundaries of Physical Properties,
Interalia, Seoul, Korea
2011 Casting Memories, ArtGate Gallery, New York, USA
Metamorphosis of Imagination, Artgate Gallery, New York, USA
2010 centric Sculpture, Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, New York, USA
Changwon Asian Art Festival (The Fantastic Garden),
Sungsan Art Hall, Changwon, Korea
Korean Art Show, 608 West 28th Street, New York, USA
2009 under Exposed, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, USA
Korean Eye, the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2008 Insa Art Festival (INSAF) 2008, Gallery ARTSIDE, Seoul, Korea
ACAF NY 2008 Asian Contemporary Art Fair, Pier 92,
New York, USA
Pulse Art Fair NY 2008, Pier 40, New York, USA
Blue Dot Asia 2008, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Destructionconstruction, Teapot Gallery for Contemporary Art,
Cologne, Germany
2006 G-2 Group Exhibition, Gallery-2, Chicago, USA
The Black Gravity series, characteristic of
the early stages of my work, began in the
year 2007 and gave rise to the Mindset
series. One cannot measure the weight of
shadows by using a physical notion of weight
that is based upon a mathematical standard
but I believe that sometimes there are
shadows that appear light or heavy. It is impossible for the scale of an artwork to
surpass the sublimity of nature, but I believe
it is possible to evoke a similar psychological
response. I believe that at the moment in
which another person’s sensibilities come
into contact with the unfamiliar world which
I have visualised, it then becomes possible
to share a psychological situation similar
to experiencing a foreign environment. The
Black Gravity series originates from my desire
to rouse one’s sensibilities in this manner. Solo exhibitions
2011 Crumbling Thoughts, Tenri Gallery, New York, USA
2009 Black Landscape, Teapot Gallery for Contemporary Art,
Cologne, Germany
2008 Black Gravity, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, USA
2005 The Dry Flower Garden, Gallery ARTSIDE, Seoul, Korea
Collections
2009 Seoul Museum of Art
2008 National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea (Art Bank Program)
Carl Hammer Gallery USA
2012 Gana Residencies Residency Program, Janghung, Korea
2011 Art Council Korea
2010 International Studio & Curatorial program (ISCP),
Paradise Culture Foundation Grant, Seoul, Korea
2008 Seoul Foundation for Art and Culture Grant, Seoul, Korea
Yeesookyung
Translated Vase, 2007,
Ceramic trash, aluminum bar, epoxy,
24K gold leaf,
95 × 210 × 120 cm
90 ×90 ×160 cm;
80 × 85 × 170 cm,
Installation scene, solo show, 2009
150 × 110 × 60 cm;
145 × 135 × 90 cm,
Installation scene, 2009,
Vancouver Sculpture Biennale,
Vancouver, Canada
Flame, 2009-1,
Cinnabar on Korean paper,
Collection of Almine Rech Gallery,
260 × 196 cm
Flame, 2009-2,
260 × 196 cm
Flame, 2009-3,
260 × 196 cm
I work very slowly and repetitively. I keep on
working because I can never predict what a
sudden idea that pops into my head will turn
into. While working, the process changes
me and my beliefs. I work in order to change
myself to be more different from the past.
Solo exhibitions
2011 Almine Rech gallery, Brussels, Belgium
2009 Thomas Cohn gallery, São Paolo, Brazil
Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, Japan
Museum Schloß Oranienbaum, Dessau, Germany
2008 Broken Whole, Michael Schultz Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Group exhibitions
2012 Sydney Biennale,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia
Arsenale: First International Biennale of Contemporary Art
in Ukraine 2012, Kiev, Ukraine
Asian Female Artists Exhibition, Fukuok Asian Art Museum,
Fukuok, Japan
2011 Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum,
Samsung Museum of Art,
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA
Tell Me Tell Me: Australian and Korean Contemporary Art
1976–2011, National Art School Gallery, Sydney, Australia
2010 Busan Biennale, Now Asian Artist, Busan Cultural Center, Korea
Triennale of KOGEI in Kanazawa, Kanazawa City, Japan
2009 Vancouver Biennale, Vancouver, Canada
Temptation Body, Galleria Alessandro Bagnai, Florence, Italy
Double Fantasy, Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of
Contemporary Art, Marugame City, Japan
Fragile-Fields of Empathy,
Museum of Modern Art of Saint Etienne, France
Encounter: Dublin, Lisbon, Hong Kong and Seoul, Korea
Foundation Cultural Center, Seoul, Korea
2008 Meditation Biennale Poznan 2008, Poznan, Poland
Hirschwegeinundzwanzig, Kunstverein Coburg, Germany
Metamorphoses, Korean Trajectories, Espace Louis Vuitton,
Paris, France
Micro-narratives, Saint-Etienne Museum, France
Liverpool Biennale, Fantasy Studio, A Foundation, Liverpool, UK
B side, Do Art Seoul, Seoul, Korea
To have or to be, Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin, Ireland / Palacio
Galveias, Lisbon, Portugal
Collections
Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas City, USA
Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Boston Museum of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA
Smart Museum of Art, Chicago University, USA
the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
Public collection of Yu-un, Tokyo, Japan
Gyeonggido Museum of Art, Ansan, Korea
City of Echigo-Tsumari, Japan
The POSCO Museum, Pohang, Korea
Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Yoo Haeri
Family Unit, 2010,
Acrylic, pastel, spray paint,
collage on canvas,
Collection of Artist Pension Trust,
228.6 × 182.9 cm
Honeymoon Island, 2010,
Acrylic, pastel, spray paint on canvas,
Collection of
Thomas W. Bark & Philip S. Battaglia,
228.6 × 198.1 cm
Lazy Sitter, 2010,
Acrylic, pastel, spray paint,
collage on canvas,
Collection of Isabelle Gros Kowal,
228.6 × 182.9 cm
Sunken Garden, 2010,
Acrylic, pastel, spray paint on canvas,
Collection of Gabriel Winter,
228.6 ×198.1 cm
In my painting I create colourful expressive
psychological landscapes depicting the
dark side of human psychology such as
pain, vulnerability, oppression and sexuality.
I play with opposites such as figuration and
abstract, beauty and violence, light and
dark. The immediate spontaneity of strokes
and mark-making comes from the influence
of calligraphy from my Korean heritage.
The narratives are developed from strokes
produced in a brief moment and are judged
based on the gesture’s emotive quality that
they stand in memory of. Just as a child
views the world, my work segregates and
playfully mutates the realties present.
Education
1992 BFA, Kyungbook National University, Korea
1997 MFA, Pratt Institute, New York
Solo exhibitions
2010 Body Hoarding, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, USA
2009 Paper Deep, Kresge Art Museum, East Lansing, USA
2008 Pain Patch, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, USA
Group exhibitions
2012 K-Artists in New York , Korean Art Show 2012, New York, USA
2011 Asia Unspecific, curated by Lilly Wei, Five Myles, New York, USA
2010 Abstraction Revisited, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA
2009 Faces & Facts: Korean Contemporary Art in New York , Sylvia
Wald and Po Kim Gallery, New York, USA
Moment as Monument, Travancore Palace, New Delhi, India
Play, Monica De Cardenas Gallery, Milan, Italy
2008 Hadassah Emmerich – Chitra Ganesh, Dona Nelson – Haeri
Yoo, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, USA
Movement, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, USA
Chatterjee & Lal Gallery, Mumbai, India
Defining a Moment: 25 New York Artists, House of Campari,
New York, USA
Pulse Art Fair, Saatchi Online, New York, USA
2007 Fresh Illusions, White Box Gallery, New York, USA
Twenty–Twenty, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, USA
2006 Drift 2006, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, New York, USA
An Inch of Truth, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, USA
Live Feed, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, USA
Fragmentations of the Self-Smeared, Smudged, Marked and
Drawn, Rush Arts Gallery, New York, USA
2005 Me, Myself and My Emotions,
Tastes like Chicken Art Space, Williamsburg, USA
2004 Queens International 2004,
Queens Museum of Arts, New York, USA
2009–2011 Chashama Visual Art Program, New York, USA
2008 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space program,
New York, USA
Korea Cultural Council Grant, Seoul, Korea
2007 AHL Foundation Award, New York, USA
2006 Henry Street Settlement, Abrons Art Center AIR Workspace
Program, New York, USA
You Myung Gyun
The Floating World, 2005,
Ink on newspapers,
3 × 3 × 4 m
The Floating World, 2005,
Ink on newspapers,
2 × 2 × 4 m
The Photosynthesis, 2006,
Ink on fabric,
3 × 3 × 5 m
My work is inspired by nature as I find it to
be constantly perfect in beauty and being.
Within nature there are systems of control
and harmonic energy that contribute to
the natural order. While human history can
form a part of nature, I accept and feel all
natural phenomena, free of cultural and
religious ideas. I wish to expose the real
world through my art and therefore questions
surrounding reality, truth, and heritage
surface within my work.
In my earlier three-dimensional works,
I would create images like huge stones
floating in space or waterfalls or unknown
creatures. I now want to experiment with
installations that connect more positively
with both nature and human society. The
images in my new work represent endless
space and time in the cosmos and the
ephemeral quality of natural energies.
Education
1997 MFA, Tama Art College, Tokyo, Japan
1984 Busan University, Korea
Solo exhibitions
2010 Gallery 604, Busan, Korea
Gallery Sinsegae, Seoul, Korea
2007 Gallery A Story, Seoul, Korea
2005 Goyang Art Studio, Goyang, Korea
2003Keumsan Gallery, Seoul Korea
2002 Q Gallery, Tokyo
Suka Gallery, Busan, Korea
1998 Kyung Suk Gallery, Busan, Korea
1996 Kong Kan Gallery, Busan, Korea
1995 Space World Gallery, Busan, Korea
Group exhibitions
2011 Sculpture Key West, Key West, USA
2010 Off the Wall, Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Korea
Floating World, Governors Island, New York, USA
2008 The Human and City, Goyang Spart, Korea
Pocheon Asian Art Festival,
Pocheon Banwol Art Hall, Pocheon, Korea
Hub, Goyang Art studio, Korea
2005 Metamorphosis, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum,
Busan, Korea
On The Other Side of The Light,
Centre International d’ Art Contemporain, Carros, France
Premium Sculpture Symposium Huzino, Japan
The Earth and Wind Exhibition Art Hall, Seoul, Korea
1997 Legends from Daily Life, Sonje Museum, Kyongju, Korea
An Aspect of Ulsan Art in the 1990’s,
Atrium Gallery, Ulsan, Korea
1996 An Aspect of Korean Art in the 1990’s,
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo,
Japan/The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan
1995 Sea Art Festival, Haeundae, Busan, Korea
Present Local Art, Gumho Museum, Seoul, Korea
From Asia To Asia, Kanagawa Prefectural Jall, Japan
1993 The Fiber Art of Japan & Italy, Space 21, Tokyo, Japan
1992 Analyzing the Paper, Imadate Museum, Imadate, Japan
Tama Uruoi, Tama Praza, Tokyo, Japan
Azuki Art Festival, Azuki Museum, Japan
International Contemporary Arts Exhibition,
Tokyo Prefecture Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Kanagawa Art Annual Kanagawa Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Urban Art Exhibition, O-Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Six Busan Artists, Gallery Noveou, Busan, Korea
The Ik /Sarin Gallery, Yokohama, Japan
Japan Contemporary Arts Exhibition,
Tokyo Prefecture Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Supported by
Contributing Staff
Martin Capstick
Alan Carri
Christopher Domitter
Morgaine Downes
Tom Downes
Monica Fleary
Luke Fowler
KD Han
Shana Hong
Sonia Hong
Hyebeen Jeon
Dongho Lee
Hosup Lee
Min Lee
Ryan O’Donnell
Anna Rakic
Liz Roberts
Joe Sole
Sooyoung Son
Michelle Uribe
Cover Image
Yeesookyung
Translated vase, 2007,
Photo from Oranienbaum museum, Dessau, Germany
Title images
Courtesy of Korea Tourism Organization
Front: Jin-Woo Kim, In-je, Gangwon province, Seorak-San
Back: Lee Jae-Seong, Taebaek, Taebaek-San
Images and contributions
Kim Dong Yoon
Composites, Dome, Clibing Cage, Hays, Caged Garbage
Images courtesy Michael Hoppen Contemporary, London
Kang Hyung Koo
Theresa
Image courtesy of the artist and Arario Gallery
Kim Byoungho
Soft Crash
Image courtesy of the artist and Arario gallery
Koo Sungsoo
From the series Magical Reality Comics
Courtesy of Parkryusook Gallery
Lee Gilwoo
All images are courtesy of Sun Contemporary Gallery
Moon Beom
Secret Garden 251_black
Courtesy of the Seoul Museum of Art
Oh Jeong Il
Lover
Courtesy of Artlink Inc
Yoo Haeri
Family Unit, Honeymoon Island, Sunken Garden, Lazy Sitter
Courtesy of artist
Yeesookyung
Courtesy of National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea,
Photo by Kim SangTae
Courtesy of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea,
Photo from Oranienbaum museum, Dessau, Germany
Courtesy of Spencer Museum
Translated Vase, 2009, Translated Vase, 2009,
Photo from Vancouver biennale
First published in 2012 by Booth-Clibborn Editions
in the United Kingdom
www.booth-clibborn.com
Korean Eye 2012 Exhibition
Saatchi Gallery, London
26 July – 23 September 2012
Booth-Clibborn Editions © 2012
Korean Eye © 2012
www.koreaneye.org
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, or stored in any retrieval system of any
nature without prior written permission of the copyright holders,
except for permitted fair dealing under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
The information in this book is based on material supplied to
Booth-Clibborn Editions by the authors. While every effort
has been made to ensure accuracy, Booth-Clibborn Editions
does not under any circumstances accept responsibility for
any errors or omissions. Booth-Clibborn Editions has made
all reasonable efforts to reach artists, photographers and/
or copyright owners of images used in this book. We are
prepared to pay fair and reasonable fees for any usage made
without compensation agreement.
A cataloging-in-publication record for this book is available
from the publisher.
ISBN
978-1-86154-336-3
Design
North
Print and binding
Lecturis BVD
Further books
Korean Eye: Contemporary Korean Art
Korean Eye II

Korean contemporary

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