Back from the Summer holidays and already a busy period for the Korean art scene. Find below our picks from what's on view in October 2023.
Kwon Sun-Young's "Blended Moments" features a collection of artworks centered around the imaginary world of aesthetic desires and the power of beauty to move us. Various everyday objects are taken out of their ususal surroundings, glamourised and transplanted into a different more beautiful world. The result is a colourful explosion bridging the gap between the mundane and the dreamy "somewhere else". On a different level, the artist reflects the mdoern compulsion with buying and storing, overall "having" objects. Overflowing wardrobes, stuffed cupboards, all serve as a repository of our memories with every object having its own history and personal meaning. We buy things because we want to enjoy them forever but is that possible in a world in which everything is transient? To raise that question, the artist has juxtaposed hoarded objects with flowers, Nature's natural ornaments which die every year to be reborn the next one.
Artist Park Je-Song's latest show "Memories of a Poem" consists of artworks created using AI. The AI has been asked to paint something on the basis of a poem written by the artist. The poems themselves capture memories of a long-lost past. The exhibition explores the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence in the modern age and translates humanity's general dependability on technology into the realm of fine art.
Four artists - Kwon Ki-Su, Song Tae-Hun, Yoo Geun-Taek, Heo Jin - join forces to explore the integration of modern fine art elements into traditional folk paintings. As our external reality undergoes constant changes, how can these be authentically, in a Korean way, integrated in the folk fine art tradition? Images reflect the times we live in but they are also a subject to the demands of times, particularly to the demands of the market, economics, trends and technology. How do we re-negotiate tradition and modernity in an authentic way?
"Illusion Plane Space" by Kim Ye-Ji and Lee Ji-Yeong explores exhibitions in the metaverse. Illusionary objects have been rendered in 3D and an entirely new viewing environment has been created for the audience. You can take a look here.
Artists Bang Ye-Eun, Seol Go-Eun, Lim Hyeon-A, Jang Ye-Bin and Choi Min-Hye present "A Fantasy Without an Original", an exhibition which questions not the memory but the event, not the fantasy but the reality. Is there really one solid reality or do we all live in our imaginary worlds? Did X really happen or is my perception fo what happened the only reality?
Gallery DOS presents "The Journey of Light" by Kim Min-Ji whcih explores a modern approach to Buddhist paintings. Light cannot be captured as is but it needs to be reflected off of something for us to see it. Upon a closer inspection of the artworks included in the exhibition one begins to see the image of Buddha reflected off of different surfaces. The multi-angle-ness off the visual is a reference to the many masks we wear in our everyday lives. The person we are with out families is not the person we are with our friends, and that is a different person from the face we show to our colleagues etc. Within this hall of mirrors, where is the true self? Does it even exist? Or is the truth we are looking for to be found in the totality of the experience?
Mi-Gwang Gallery presents Seol Jong-Bo's "Korean Landscapes", an exhibition which explores Korean landscapes as a silent witness to lives and destinies. The environment, the cityscapes serve as a movie set or a theatre stage on which the drama of life plays out. The space becomes the silent observer and archivist of the stories that took place in it. If only it could speak...
"Romance Rooted in Eternity: Flowers in Bloom" is a group exhibition featuring 70 artworks united by the same question: How can we capture eternity? What is the one true notion we can hold on to in the vast ocean of life? Here, too, flowers are chosen as the main motif because they symbolise the impermanence of all things. But and extra layer of meaning is added as well - flowers as symbols of romantic attitudes to life and reality; flowers as companions in our lives.
Gallery Johyun presents Park Seo-Bo's latest exhibition. The artist is one of the leading figures of the Korean avant-garde movement and pioneer of the Dansaekhwa (Monochrome) movement which aims to blend the traditional Korean spirit of humility and modesty with Western Abstraction. His works are one of the examples of a successful mixture of traditional, authentic and organically Korean ideas and techniques with modern, Western artistic ideas.
Sookmyung Women's University has designed an exhibition which explores the meaning of wardrobes, clothing storing methods and fashion as a repository of the attitudes, thoughts, ideas and moods of the times. Why is it that wardrobe design changed over time? Why are the changes we see in this and not that direction? What defines the changes that are accepted and successful and those that are not? How are different social conditions reflected in the items we use? These are some of the questions that the organisers aim to raise in this 6-month long show titled "Uncovering an Emblem of an Era in a Wardrobe:1920-1960".