In 2017 and 2018, U.K.-Korea relations will be celebrated through cultural activities in Korean national cultural institutions. It is within this context that MMCA will present from November 2017 to January 2018 a monographic exhibition dedicated to the work of Richard Hamilton.
Richard Hamilton, one of the most important artists in the second half of the 20th century, is not widely known in Asia, although he was among the first generation of post-war artists whose work drew on a new kind of image world to produce a new kind of picture.
Hamilton was fascinated both by the ubiquity of the mass-produced image in modern life and the way it operated to construct expectation, consumption, and desire. Hamilton immersed himself in this image world as a participant, while also keeping sufficient distance to be a critical observer.
It could be argued that although there is no signature style to Hamilton's work, there is a signature approach, based on systematically working through the possibilities of a particular image: deconstruction, alteration, production, and repetition. This serial approach characterizes Hamilton's work as a picture-maker over six decades and is the focus of this exhibition.
The exhibition also reveals how Hamilton consciously worked his way through the classic genres of painting, creating still lifes and landscapes in the era of advertising, portraits and history paintings in the age of television.
