This post provides a flashback of this year’s summer time in Seoul. I spent most of July and August in Seoul. It has been more than a month since my departure, but memories still linger in my head. On the contrary to my experience in Europe where summer is the holiday season or Shanghai where…
March 12, 2013 – June 23, 2013 This show at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul is a yearly event showcasing a small group of ‘best’ emerging artists in Korea. It was a nice occasion to get acquainted with some names that we may be hearing more often in the upcoming years. A…
Plateau (Samsung), Seoul, March 7 – May 23, 2013 The main thing that stuck in my mind from seeing this show were the seemingly simple ‘arte-povera’-like sculptures (assemblages of cardboard boxes, trash bags, mattresses, wooden sticks) , which, after a close examination, revealed themselves as meticulously crafted ‘copies’ executed in bronze, resin etc. In the…
10 Paiknamjune-ro, Sanggal-dong, Giheung-gu, yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, 446-905 Korea; http://www.njpartcenter.kr/en/ Nam June Paik Art Centre (NJP Centre) is located in proximity to Suwon. It is a museum dedicated to the video art pioneer Nam June Paik. There seem to be rotating exhibitions, which are centered on the work of Nam June Paik. It was my second…
Seogyo Art Space, Hongdae, Seoul, http://eng.seoulartspace.or.kr/space_seogyo/introduce.asp December 28, 2012, 18:30 Seogyo Art Space is located in Hongdae area of Seoul, close to Hongik university. On December 28th an art performance relay took place there, and as I was in Seoul and a friend invited me, I decided to give it a try and get a…
Seoul Museum of Art – Nam Seoul Branch, Seoul, http://seoulmoa.seoul.go.kr December 2012 The ‘south side’ branch of the Seoul Museum of Art had an exhibition on show that featured a well-balanced mix of media art. There was a multi-channel video projection showing a surreal spatial stop-motion situation (Sophie Clements), generative computer graphics (Lab[au]), a projection…
PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, http://www.plateau.or.kr November 2012 – February 2013 The show brought together a number of Korean artists by selecting artworks that have a relation to the central topic of “landscape”. In the entrance space of the gallery the visitor was greeted by a sound installation of bird and animal sounds accompanied…
Kukje Gallery, Seoul, http://www.kukjegallery.com November – December 2012 Yuko Shiraishi is primarily and abstract painter and paintings is what is primarily on display. Paintings are usually in one background color, combined with thin stripes or small dots. The dots or stripes make them look a bit like linen or cloth designs. The gallery’s materials say:…
Artsonje Center, Seoul, http://artsonje.org/eng/ November 2012 – January 2013 Shinro Ohtake is a Japanese artist working in collage, drawing and installation; he is also known for his involvement in the Japan noise music scene. The show at Artsonje spread over two floors.
In December, I visited South Korea and had a look at what is happening there in terms of Fine Arts. I checked out some smaller privately managed spaces around Seoul like Artsonje Center, Kukje Gallery and Plateau as well as some public institutions like the Nam Seoul Museum of Fine Art and the National Museum…