Artists may grow old but their works are timeless
Every old man was once an ambitious boy. Artists are no exception.
“I am embarrassed to be reintroducing the works I’ve done in my 20s now in my 60s. Young people tend to be critical towards society, don’t they? I was too, although I now do different kinds of works,” artist Kim Yong-chul told the press Friday at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon.
Kim was one of the 22 rising Korean artists who participated in the “Young Korean Artists Exhibition” organized by the museum in 1981. He had taken a picture of himself holding a blank newspaper and scribbled “This is but a piece of paper” on it with oil paint for the show.
“It was a satire on the newspapers of that time which could not function normally under the military dictatorship. I wrote the sentence in English because I was scared they might come after me after reading it in Korean,” Kim reminisced.
Thirty years have passed and Kim is showcasing the exact same work once again at the 30th Anniversary of the Young Korean Artists show currently running at the museum, not as a young artist but in the capacity of the show’s senior participant.
The exhibition is a round-up of the 30 years since the Young Korean Artists Exhibition. The annual exhibition is arguably the museum’s oldest and most representative show, which produced many leading artists who are now acknowledged in and out of Korea.
Among the 327 artists to participate so far, 43 of them, including Joo Tae-seok, Koo Bohn-chang, Noh Sang-kyoon, Suh Do-ho and Lee Wan are back with the original exhibits they displayed in their first “Young Korean Artists” show, as well as some new works. Half the participants can still pass for young while the other half, like Kim, are now in their 50s and 60s.
“It is hard to say that the selected artists are the representative artists of the exhibition. All 327 artists are important but we had to sort them out considering many conditions like the exhibition space. What is certain, though, is that the exhibition can also be seen as a round-up of the last 30 years of Korean art,” said Lee Chu-young, the exhibition curator.
Indeed, the exhibition showcases a wide array of works not just in terms of time but also in genre. Divided into two sections -- the 1980s room and the 1990s to present room -- the exhibition is packed with 150 paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos and installation works. What is interesting is that one can feel the artists’ youthful enthusiasm in every work, no matter how old the artist is now.
The artists featured in the 1980s room often revealed defiance against society in their works.
Kim Yong-ik, for example, reacted against the conventional art world of the time. Rebelling against an art world in which every artist had to have one significant style or “brand” and stick to it, he rolled up all his drawings in a packet, labeled it “To Kumho Museum” and hung it up as an exhibit.
Rhee Ki-bong, on the other hand, expressed the vanity of knowledge by pouring water on a desk where an encyclopedia lays open.
“One summer day, I stepped into my studio and found my books all wet because rain had leaked from the ceiling. A wet book means death; it is impossible to revive it,” said Rhee.
The installation work, titled “Extra-Ordinary-Late-Summer,” is one of the show’s most eye-catching -- and ear-catching -- exhibits.
Younger artists in the 1990s section tend to be more bold and whimsical.
Starting with photographer Koo Bohn-chang’s well-known work in which he sewed together many photos that each feature a body part to make one big body, visitors can find eerie works by several photographers that focus on human body.
Hong Sung-do assembled photos of the human body and titled it “Plastic Surgery,” while Kim Jun tattooed canvases using a variety of materials to make them look like nasty human skin, took pictures of human bodies and colored them and even tried 3-D tattooing by filming a bunch of small and big pink bubbles growing on an arm.
Lee Wan, who is known for his baseballs made of ground chicken and tools made of ground beef, this time displays a skull made of butter.
Do not be surprised to find the work on the floor, because it was not you but the artist who dropped it. It accidently slipped out of Lee’s hands while he was installing it on the day before the show’s opening. Lee said that he decided to leave it like that, damaged, on the floor.
“It was supposed to be put in a glass case, but seeing it on the floor, I had a feeling that that’s where it belonged. The material seemed to have come to life,” Lee said.
The exhibition runs through June 6 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. Tickets are 5,000 won for adults and 3,500 won for youths. For more information, call (02) 2188-6000 or visit www.moca.go.kr
By Park Min-young (claire@heraldm.com)
