The Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art is hosting an exhibition on the historical importance of Kim Gurim as a pioneer in holistic and experimental modern art. His body of work encompasses oil paintings, video art, installations, printmaking, performance and more. The show includes 230 artworks exploring the relationship between nature and superficiality, yin and yang and duality in general.
Gana Art Center is hosting an exhibition which will look into the process that artist Han Jin-Seop went through to create his sculpture Father Andrew Kim Dae-Geon (the first Korean Catholic Priest). The statue was exhibited in the Vatican in September 2023. The production process - from selecting the stone to moulding it - took about 2 years and it is the events of these two years that the show explores. Visitors will be able to see the first sketches and learn more about the Carrara stone used, the role of Cardinal Lazarus Yoo Heung-sik in the process and more. The main motif of Han Jin-Seop's work is "life" is how it can be captured and preserved in "lifeless" stone. The show runs until 14 january 2024.
Taejin Seong's "All my days and precious moments" includes artworks combining text and images on woodblocks echoing the Tripitaka Koreana tradition. The artist mixes traditional folk art motifs and modern pop culture characters thereby bringing together past and present. The pop culture robot Taekwon V is depicted as a symbol of Korean spirit energy and made a part of a larger canon of Korean character figures.
Asia Culture Center hosts "Dear Baba-Nyonya: The Further in Cross-Culture in Seaport Cities" which looks at cross-cultural and cross-civilisational exchanges. The artists - OMA Space, Song Changae, Park Keunho - take visitors to Baba Nyonya, a new mixed culture created by combining indigenous cultural elements from India, China, and Europe.
Asia Culture Center hosts "City of Gaia", an exhibition that explores the relationship between plants and humans as creations of nature and civilisation respectively. According to the artist, capitalism and industrialism have drawn a division line between humans and nature and Mother Earth (Gaia) is responding in the extreme through climate cataclisms. The show features 11 teams of artists from China, Japan, France, and Sierra Leone.
Lee Kwang's latest exhibition explores the meaning and expressions of sympathy and compassion as key motifs in religion and spirituality. Ancient mythologies from East and West all underscore the unity of all things and the interconnectedness of life. The artist invites us to meditate on the importance of recognising the Other's right to exist and the way in which our actions may have a ripple effect far beyond our expectations. Describing his art as contemporary mythological paintings, Lee Kwang reflects on the oneness of Heaven, Earth and Man and the limits of seeing Man as the measure of all things.
Arario Gallery hosts Jeong Kang-Ja's "It has Always Been the Beginning". Jeong Kang-Ja is one of the most influencial modern artists who is famous for having travelled the world and reflected her ideas, thoughts and dreams on the canvas. Initially, her art received little attention in Korea but in the 2000s this began to change and her body of work has been examined and re-examined times and times again ever since. The show features paintings created between 1995 and 2010 in which she records the experiences she encountered while exploring an unfamiliar world.