MMCA Gwacheon: “The Sound of Things” + Choi Jong Tae “Retrospective”

Seoul, June 23 – November 1, 2015 (The Sound of Things) and September 1 – November 29, 2015 (Choi Jong Tae), http://mmca.go.kr

“The Sound of Things” presented 30 or more years of Korean minimalist/nature-related art in the large circular exhibition space of MMCA Gwacheon and adjacent rooms. It was a comprehensive selection and very worthy to see, something I unfortunately had to undertake within a short time.

When looking through it, one parallel thought came to my mind related to Joseph Beuys. In my mind, I created a connection between Joseph Beuys’ large scale sculptures and some of the works in this show. Both made use of pure materials, even though Korean minimalists, even the most minimal ones placed more stress on the craft aspect of engaging with the material using hands. But it was the tiles of Park Sukwon’s works – “Accumulation” that sparked the connection. Beuys often talked about accumulation and energy flow directing, and this was the common denominator with some of the works in this exhibition. Here this rhetoric was mostly related towards a man-nature relationship or animist beliefs. I think Beuys was the only person in the world who managed to start from this base, yet extend it all the way into relational art, performance and social engagement. Here these two realms seemed to remain miles away, and on the contrary, the engagement with materiality seemed to signify a retreat from society into a more private and spiritual realm.

Choi Byungso’s work also touched me. If I understood it correctly, he simply glues newspapers together into a large strip and then used a ball point pen to cover the whole surface with a thick layer of ink until all the text disappeared. The resulted blanked out and torn sheets had nothing to say, yet they did not shy away from saying it, to paraphrase John Cage.

After this show I managed to see Choi Jong Tae’s retrospective. First I even wanted to skip it, but upon entering, the works strangely touched me. It was mostly figurative sculpture, based on a modernist tradition. I think it was the spiritual dimension that spoke to me: Choi’s attempt to fuse his Christian belief with modernist formalism, in order to develop something that would be both contemporary, while encompassing his spiritual beliefs.