Three Korean-born artists had solo shows at the 2009 Venice Biennale: Haegue Yang in the national pavilion, and Woojung Chun and Atta Kim as collateral events.
In LKL’s brief sojourn in Venice, it was not possible to get around all the Korean participants in various group shows, but for the record, they were:
1: Lim Won-ju in Detournement Venise 2009. No images available.
2: Hye Rim Lee in Glass Stress. You can find a video of the work Crystal City Spun, on the website of the artist’s gallery here.
The following still is sourced from the Starkwhite blog
3: Kim Minjung in “Sant’ Elena: Seduction into the Sign” – a show based on the dialogue between the installation of Richard Nonas and the works of five women artists:
Photo Credit: Dalbera
4: Finally, Koo Jeong-a had two installations, one in the main Giardini and one in the Arsenale. The Giardini installation, entitled A Reality Upgrade & End Alone (2009) involved 3,000 rhinestones embedded in a lawn. The catalogue promised that her installation was “imperceptible”, and thus it proved. The rhinestones were unfortunately completely invisible even if you knew what you were looking for – maybe by the time I visited either the tourists had pocketed them all as souvenirs or they had just been trampled into the mud. Or maybe they were hidden under the autumn leaves. I emailed Koo’s gallery after I visited the Biennale, and they confirmed that the rhinestones were still there, in the soil, somewhere.
Koo’s installation in the Arsenale, Fantasissima & Fantasissimus (2009), was easier to find. A sculpture that looked like a tree that was about to turn into one of Tolkein’s Ents.
