This February, the topic of the exhibitions is the intersection of past and future. I think in a couple of years when we look back at 2023, we will remember this year as the year one world ended and another one began. And this feeling seems to be shared by many contemporary Korean artists.
Choi Yun-Jeong's "Out of the Heart" opens at iLHO Gallery. His artworks offer viewers a conversation on line and color as expressions of events and emotions. The artist utilises the power of colours to evoke emotions and uses simple geometric lines and forms to outline the events that caused these emotions. The separated canvas space tells a story, one that is coloured with emotion. The final question for the viewer is: what made you stop and look? The visual depiction or the emotions that it evoked?
What is of particular interest in this exhibition is the artist's connection to Dansekhwa. The term Dansaekhwa literally translates as “monochrome paintings” and refers to the abstract works created in Korea in the 1960s and 1970s. The movement has become the symbol of modern art in the country. The first Dansaekhwa works appeared in the 1960s and the 1970s, the most controversial period in modern Korean history. Clean-looking neutral colours are seen as a return to nature and traditional Asian values; an escape from the noise of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. The painting process was a sort of self-healing for a generation of artists which grew up in the chaos of post-war Korea. Off-white, neutral colours dominate the canvas. In Korean culture white is associated with the traditional ceramic jars, the rice cakes used in many rites, the traditional Korean Hanji paper. During the Japanese occupation, Koreans were often referred to as “the people in white clothes”. White contains all colours in itself and thus is a symbol of emptiness which is seen as the beginning of all things. As I mentioned in the opening, the theme of new beginnings is very pertinent in 2023.
Kwon Minho's "Clouded Breath" is now on view at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA). It captures, in pencil and charcoal drawings and digital photo collages, landscapes from Korea's industrialisation. His works elaborately depict the symbols of the period - factories and machines. His 2020 artwork "Grey Breath" at ones refers to chimney smoke, cigarettes and the foggy breath of cold winter mornings. The choice of exhibition venue is not accidental - Cheonju Hall used to be a tobacco plant. The show includes works executed in various mediums - silk screen, video, installation and AR. When visitors download the application, they can project on the museum's wall an AR experience of Cheonju during its industrialisation period and immerse themselves in the mood to draw their own conclusions. By giving visitors the opportunity to revisit the past, they are also left to draw their own conclusions about the rapid change that Korea had to go through to survive economically. But as much as this is a conversation about the past, it is also a conversation about the present because we find ourselves at the start of a new wave of massive Fourth Industrial Revolution which threatens to have the same consequences, if not graver. Have we learnt something from the past? What is it? If anything at all, now is the time to utilise it.
Artist Kim Jong Gu, whose latest exhibition "Fe- Iron Poweder Landscapes" is on view at Stela Gallery, started his artistic journey as an iron sculptor. Due to an accident with one of his sculptures, he switched to working with iron powder thereby removing the heaviness and aggression of the metal and turning it into a soft and gentle material for creating lyrical traditional landscapes. This approach at once blends nature and industrialisation, and juxtaposes our original state as being one with nature and developing the human civilisation. Iron is a symbol of factories and machines while traditional Korean landscape paintings are lyrical, foggy and poetic. Both polarities exist as realities, underpinned by a layer of Invisible. It is this last layer that has the most profound influence on us.
"Chaos" by ddaannss at Spaceunit4 gallery features quirky images of people made of trees. Or to be more precise, they are creatures not humans. But the trees are conscious. Wait, thing get even more complicated. Eventually, you can't be sure what is what. Everything is shifting and changing. The ground is breaking underneath out feet. ddaannss mixes Joseon folk paintings and Cubism to express the disorderly thoughts of overlapping minds. It is a good metaphor for what life in contemporary megapolises feels like. Seoul is so densely populated that during rush hour when you look at it from above, it seems like human bodies are intertwining in all sorts of twisted ways. So do their pathways, destinies and mind fields, their interests, ideas, goals and dreams. We see the image every day but do we engage in its philosophical inspection?
Jung Ok Kim's "Slippery Sentences" is open this month at Fill Gallery. It offers art lovers an important conversation on the continuing anxiety of the post-pandemic period. Even after the official end of the lockdowns the feeling of some catastrophe hanging in the air continues. In the realm of the visible and tangible there is nothing. But the strange sensation is there. The aquarium represent the closed living environment within which the fish live in constant competition among themselves for resources, a topic very sensitive in Korea. Korea is one of the most competitive societies in the world where everyone - from young children to old Department Managers - is ranked against their peers. And even though the concept of competition is often associated with the context of professional environments, it extends beyond that. And all the way into our homes. Even in this most private realm, the feeling of freedom is being denied to us. We are entrapped in a limited space - yet another burning topic in Korean society. Home prices in Korea have reached levels way beyond what ordinary people can afford. The financial crisis of 1998 wiped out most of people's savings and they were unable to help their children buy homes. So there is a generation of young Koreans that will never have a safe roof over their heads, will live in small cramped apartments, will never break out of the poverty cycle. Just like the fish in the aquarium. Life inside the competitive small stifling aquarium feels like a slow death but the only way out is in the frying pan. Nothing more than another type of death. Needless to say, this situation extends way beyond the borders of Korea. Those of you familiar with Korean pop culture may already think of "Squid Game".
The exhibition "Zombeism" at Asia Culture Center is another aspect of the same narrative. It chronicles the unfolding image of zombies throughout popular culture in Asia and the West and its relationship with historical events. In many ways, zombies are seen as a mirror of society (and also a product of it). Memories of the Korean Oscar movie "Parasite" come to mind. Do we live in societies of zombies that in turn turn us into zombies? Is there a way out? How do we break the cycle? Artist Bang Jeong-Ah's "Surviving among nuclear zombies" sheds light on the dangers of nuclear contamination, a topic of major significance for the entire humanity but especially pertinent to the Korean peninsula (North Korea is a nuclear state while Japan is set to begin the release of the water from the Fukushima power plant into the ocean). Ultimately, the curators want to ask the visitors to reflect on the social and psychological reasons behind our interest in zombies. Why is it that they captivate us, what do we see in them?
As an end to these heavy thoughts and topics, I recommend you view "Far Away from Early Morning" , a solo exhibition by documentary photographer Kim Jae-Dong, which aims to give us a sense of optimism despite the uncertainty of the times we live in. His images document the life of workers engaged in their livelihoods. The connection of the individual with nature and their community is seen as the only return to our roots, the place of our emotional stability. The practical application of their creative talents is emphasied as the way to keep sanity in a world thrown into chaos. Return to simple living, the joys and sorrows of simple life of daily work. Work is also depicted as a way to provide children with a better start in life, reinforcing the connection with the home town and the local community. The roots, the common shared space as an invisible connection that runs through generations and people. The simplicity of this lifestyle begs the question - why do we miss this so much?
See all gallery shows from February 2023 here.