The
Korea Artist Prize is recognized not only as the flagship exhibition of
the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, but indeed as the
most prestigious art award in Korea. Since 2012, the museum, in collaboration
with the SBS Culture Foundation, has presented this award and the accompanying
exhibition, continuing the tradition of the former Artist of the Year (1995-2010).
Intended to support the most capable and creative artists in Korea, the Korea
Artist Prize always draws tremendous interest from the art field and
general public alike.
The
selection process for this award began with the steering committee, which
appointed eight recommenders and a team of judges from the art world. Each
recommender nominated one artist (or team of artists) whose work showed
outstanding quality and reflected various current trends. Next, after
thoroughly reviewing the portfolios of the eight nominated artists and visiting
their studios for an interview, the team of distinguished judges selected the
four finalists who are participating in the exhibition: Kim Eull, Back Seung
Woo, Ham Kyungah, and the team of mixrice (Cho Ji Eun and Yang Chul Mo). The
four finalists will present their new works in Gallery 1 and 2 of the National
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul. Finally, in October, the judges
will conduct a second review based on the results of the exhibition, and
announce the winner of the 2016 Korea Artist Prize.
Visitors
to Gallery 1 and 2 will surely be astonished to see the latest creations of
these incredible artists. In Gallery 1, for example, Kim Eull has constructed a
life-size two-story building that people can enter and explore. Blurring the
boundary between the real and virtual, the interior of the building includes a
replica of the artist's studio, allowing visitors to observe firsthand the
process of artistic creation. Hence, the world of the artist collides with our
own world in an explosion of thoughts and ideas, perhaps represented by the
approximately 1,450 glittering stars that are drawn in the gallery, forming a
small galaxy.
Installed
in the open space of Gallery 2 is the works of Back Seung Woo, showing his
diverse attempts to shatter the formal limitations and rigid interpretative
frames of the medium of photography. By altering the brightness and color of
certain parts of his photos from various locations, or rearranging the photos
from their original order, Back recalibrates the audience's reception of the
works, inspiring a wealth of new meanings and possibilities.
Gallery
2 features the works of Ham Kyungah and mixrice, all of which deal with various
forms of immigration, from the movement of people for their own survival to the
differences between political, economic, social, and cultural systems. Famous
for her embroidery works made by North Korean crafts people, Ham Kyungah
presents sculpture, installation, and performance on the themes of defecting
and settling. Meanwhile, mixrice addresses the social phenomena of incessant
movement, where people especially migrant workers, who are invisible to Korean
society are forced to continually move because of their inability to secure a
steady job, education, or income. To examine these issues, mixrice directly
collaborated with different groups of immigrant workers to produce a variety of
works (e.g., installations, murals, videos), including an installation made
with dirt that was dug from an actual redeveloped neighborhood.
Kim Eull
Kim Eull (b. 1954) expresses his
mind, body, and soul through his drawings. Transcending narrow definitions and
formal limitations, Kim generates a wide spectrum of drawings that freely
traverse the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation. Although
he studied metal crafts, Kim first drew attention for his paintings. Then in
2002, he began his drawing project, creating a series of works that emit
spectacular and explosive energy. As compared to other types of art, drawings
allow for relatively more freedom and flexibility, while also inducing a more
instantaneous physical response. Furthermore, it is possible to produce a great
many drawings within a limited time. Kim's drawings are the result of his
sensitivity to the wide world, which he confronts with every fiber of his
being. His drawings are nothing less than the blood that flows through his
veins, providing fuel for his entire body. This vivacious energy emerges from
the mind of Kim Eull and flows down through his fingertips and out into the
world. Receiving stories and ideas from the world around him, he sifts them
through his spiritual filter, thus transforming the small cosmos of his
surroundings into a big portrait.
Twilight Zone Studio (2016),
the life-size two-story building installed in the gallery, precariously
straddles the border between reality and virtuality by recreating the artist's
own studio, reminiscent of a movie set. This massive installation allows
visitors to walk directly through the artist's studio, and thus experience the
intense creative energy that emerges as the artist strives with life. Within
the studio, people can examine approximately 1,450 drawings that are displayed
on a 27.5 meter wall. Like stars in the abyss of the universe, the drawings
radiate against the deep darkness, forming their own galaxy. Kim Eull's
drawings can be seen as traces of his spirit flowing out from his body,
evidencing his various collisions with the world around him. Together, these
thousands of traces form a detailed diagram, enabling us to interpret the
operational principles of the drawing machine, Kim Eull. At the same time, they
also serve as a self-portrait providing a full-length view of the artist.
Back Seung Woo
Back Seung Woo (b. 1973) once said
that, in this era characterized by the inundation of digital images, taking a
photograph is a meaningless act, like shooting a water gun underwater. It has
been some time since idealistic values of authenticity and capturing the moment
were etched onto the tombstone of art history. But still, Back Seung Woo is a
contemporary artist who studied photography and who is highly fluent in the
language of photography. He does not so much capture images as collect them. By
manipulating images that float on the surface of photography and reconfiguring
the matrix of their meaning, he reveals the ambiguous border between reality
and unreality, existence and virtuality, and the visible and invisible. For
example, his elaborate photographs of a miniature city force the viewer to
question the nature of reality. He also evokes irony by revealing the true
reality hidden in the surreal landscape of North Korea, which looks like a
giant movie set. Through visual manipulation or rearrangement, he also elicits
new interpretations of HD photographs that are distributed by North Korea as
propaganda, or a collection of snapshots representing a person's memories. In
these and other ways, Back Seung Woo is constantly seeking to surpass the
limits of photography by opening diverse new possibilities of meaning and
expression.
Back Seung Woo has said that he
considers himself to be a picture-grapher, and he is constantly striving to
break away from the traditional roles of a photographer. He collects numerous
images, erases their contexts, reprocesses them, and thus categorizes them in
new ways. Recognizing the limits and impossibilities of taking standard
photographs, he instead emphasizes his role as a collector of images that are
floating around, online and offline, which he picturizes by adding new meaning.
To create his new works for this exhibition Framing from Within, Betweenless,
and Wholeness, he gathered photographs from various public archives, which
had been previously categorized and arranged according to strict standards. By
enlarging or enhancing parts of these photos, he effectively decolorized their
meaning and context, eventually eliciting errors from multilayered
interpretations. The accumulation of these errors results in the construction
of a new archive with a completely different context. For Colorless,
Back borrowed the Trivision format (billboards made from rotating panels) from
commercial advertising, in order to cast doubts on the supposedly absolute and
objective standards of shading (i.e., grayscale) and brightness (i.e., zone
five of brightness scale)
Ham Kyungah
Ham Kyungah (b. 1966) persistently
challenges the rules and taboos of society by penetrating the hard shell of
reality and infusing the hidden gaps with contradictions and absurdities.
Borrowing motifs from her own daily encounters with reality, she embarks on
artistic projects that require great perseverance and long hours of hard work.
For one prolonged project, she stole various small items from museum shops and
cafes around the world as an incisive parody of the shameful history of
imperialism. She also gleaned discarded items from the private home of a former
president of Korea, and used them to create a powerful metaphor of the tragedy
of Korean contemporary history. Perhaps her most famous project began when she
found a flyer of North Korean propaganda that had drifted to her house, which
inspired her to begin an illicit communication with embroiderers in North Korea.
In such ways, Ham Kyung-Ah diligently exposes to the rough layers of meaning
that are hidden within the ostensibly smooth surface of reality.
Ham always seems to be advancing
towards an invisible or unpredictable goal. The captivating aesthetics of her
works often serve as bait; it is up to the viewer to discern the keen cultural,
social, and political issues as well as the absurdity hidden beneath the lovely
surface appearance. For instance, a certain aesthetic sense is conveyed from a
seemingly ordinary display cabinet, but the exhibited goods have all been
stolen from various locales. Likewise, beautiful embroidery works with
brilliant colors are the result of her illegal transactions and interactions
with North Korean crafts people.
For this exhibition, she presents
new works on the themes of defecting and settling. Around the world, people who
are trapped within social and political systems that threaten their freedom and
survival make daring and desperate escapes, often involving extreme dangers that
the average person cannot even imagine. Ham has previously provided financial
support for North Korean defectors and documented their perilous journeys, and
she had been planning to create an art project for this exhibition based on
these endeavors. After many twists and turns, however, it was determined that
this project would have to remain unfinished. But the project is still
represented in the exhibition by the closed steel shutters that are installed
in one wall, as well as the noises that generally signal an emergency. The
exhibition also includes a miniature soccer field that is covered with abstract
patterns of brilliant colors. These colors are the traces of a performance by a
North Korean defector, a boy who happens to be a promising young soccer player.
He created the bursts of color by kicking around a soccer ball smeared with
various paints. Finally, the white streamlined sculptures in the exhibition are
enlarged areas of a camouflage pattern, which is typically used to hide from
the eyes of the enemy. Here, however, the patterns lose their function as
camouflage, becoming more like frozen monuments.
mixrice (Cho Ji Eun, Yang Chul Mo)
Working together as Mixrice, Cho Ji
Eun (b. 1975) and Yang Chul Mo (b. 1977) have engaged in a number of direct
collaborations with immigrant workers, who exist like shadows within Korean
society. mixrice's art projects are realized in diverse forms, ranging from
photographs and videos to cartoons and murals, or even the presentation of a
festival. Rather than simply criticizing the poverty or oppression of
immigrants, Cho and Yang employ a multilateral approach to address diverse
situations faced by today's immigrants. Their works investigate the trajectory,
process, and result of immigration, as well as the memories of immigrants.
Their first major project occurred in 2006, when they collaborated with the
community of immigrants working for the furniture factories in Maseok. In
supporting the autonomous expressions and cultural activities of the workers,
they even built a factory system where artists and immigrants could work
together. From seemingly innocuous beginnings, such as the immigration process
of various plants that have been abandoned due to urbanization and
redevelopment, their works expand to tell the stories of Asian people who have
been forced to immigrate after being caught in the turmoil of recent history.
Their works remain perpetually in progress.
In this exhibition, mixrice
introduces new works related to various forms of immigration, unveiling the
people (and plants) who are hidden in the unique social system of Korea. Today,
Koreans are constantly vying for the chance to immigrate, whether it be for a
job, education, wealth, or retirement. To do so, they must discard all memories
of a certain space, and reject any hope of forming the relationships that come
with settlement. mixrice follows the path of these people who are unable to
settle, as well as the plants that are deprived of time. In the process, they
question the significance of accumulated time and time left behind, which
people tend to overlook. In Korea, the primary example of relocation (a
condensed form of immigration) is the redevelopment of neighborhoods. mixrice
took dirt from one redevelopment site and presented it in the exhibition space
as the foundation for a house. Also, the shapes of plants collected from
abandoned neighborhoods appear as graffiti on the walls of the gallery.
Finally, their new video The Vine Chronicle considers the vestiges of
plants that have been trans-planted by various means.
