Six Contemporary Artists from Korea
Below are some extracts from the exhibiton catalogue.
The catalogue has 48 p., many illustrations, and text in both Danish and English.
The catalogue costs DKK 50,- and can be bought through the Art Centre Shop
Sungsoo Kim
Sungsoo Kim works mainly with wood sculpture that is painted according to Korean tradition, but he also makes drawn portraits . Both his drawings and sculptures have a naivistic and charming style.
Extract from worknote
Some reflections in the making of "People Flying on the Birds"
"I meet the world through the sculpture. Realizing the scenery of the world is through the sculpture, and so is my life. Where I come and go in search of the looks of simple men and women and their daily lives of joy and sorrow. Baak-gok is my hide-out as well as exile. I like this place not only because I can hear the sound of twittering, barking and wind-blowing, but because I don't have to meet hurrying people.
The water flowing leisurely under the bridge of Haeryang doesn't speak. It just flows down the river. A duck swimming draws freely on the water.
I travel to where there is a meditation, thinking about the people flying the sky who freed themselves from their daily living."
Kunyong Lee
Kunyong Lee works with a broad spectrum of expressions, including performance, installation, painting and sculpture, and today he is one of Korea's most recognised performance artists.
Extract from the text
"Art as a "long breath" in acentric center"
"My works are related to mainly human bodies, places where we belong to, time when we interact with eachother; that are all intimately inter-textual and inter-cultural performing. Also my works are connected with the situational current media in our days and textuality upon which my own cultural context, thought system, and the life itself's own stream and style are persisted. Especially my performances constitute for crossing over the becoming space in time and becoming time in space in specific place and time in order to maximize the communicative possibility between me - the artist and performer - and the audience."
Inhwan Oh
Inhwan Oh has developed a particular technique based on traditional culture where scents and smoke play an integral part. His works are huge installations created from incense that burns throughout the entire exhibition period.
Extract form the text
"Words in-between Men"
"In this ongoing project, "Where a Man meets Man", I contrast experimental and conceptual spaces (...) The essential part of this work is the process of sharing the piece with viewers by burning it. Producing fragrance, the physical boundary of the incense expands unpredictably into space and even into the viewer's body. It is via the consumption of my project itself that boundaries between "Space of Mine" and "Space of the other" is blurred in this project."
Younseok Oh
Younseok Oh works with installation and objects and silver is his preferred material. He is very much rooted in a traditional animistic way of thinking in which all things living have a spiritual relationship.
Extract from the text
"Concept"
"I like that Silver emits cooling (refreshing) and it is changed by the light. Silver color keeps balance and harmony, and it has the function of spiritual purification because it is involved in feminine (yin) principle, and emotional and sensitive spirit. Not only change by light but also material nature of Silver is attractive (…) Silver is considered as not metal but aesthetic, medical and preventive materials."
Sanghee Song
Sanghee Song is the only woman among the exhibiting artists. She works with expressions within installation, photography, objects and video, and among all the artists of the exhibition, she is the most politically active one.
extract from the text
Body Braces for Success - how to bow
"I made machines for people. Machines that look like fitness exercise machines, but they are not for health, but for success in society, they are a kind of compensators for success.
When people work in their offices with other people, they need to learn how they are supposed to behave formally to other people, higher persons, especially the boss. It's a kind of social manners for showing up themselves to be a nice and capable person. We have to know basic social attitudes required and educated by society, and if we didn't know yet, we have to develop good social behaviors for success in the work place. (...)
If we use the machines, we can learn perfect social etiquette automatically, and we can develop our bodies to appear as nice persons, even if we don't have respectful minds towards the other.
They are like torturing machines. Only the body works to be a good person. We become machines too.
Dongjo Yoo
Dongjo Yoo's installations, performances og videos are all focused on water, but also includes other elements such as earth, sky and weather (sun, rain, snow etc.)
Extract from the text
Three Kinds of Water
"The first reflection is water. That's because it reflects the world outside of the water and makes an image. Standing water is to a screen, what flowing water is to a film which keeps different images continously.
As we can make images with light, water represents such a peculiarity better than any other materials. According to the law of nature, being generated and circulated, water is solidified, liquified, and vaporized. It reacts even with minute light to reflect the world. Therefore it proves its existence for itself. Water receives light, reflects nature and human life and makes a world with them. Then water becomes a facial expression of that world.
Water is a kind of vessel that puts everything in it, at the same time, the water is also put in a vessel. Even a bowl of water can take an open sky in, likewise, reflected pictures in water have different depth and width in accordance with the specialties of the images.