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Category Archives: Venice Biennale 2007

A Biennale footnote

16-Nov-07

A Biennale footnote

As an appendix to my other two posts on Korean involvement in the 2007 Venice Biennale it is worth noting two other London Korean links. Firstly, in an interesting Anglo-Korean-US partnership, London gallery Haunch of Venison and Seoul's Kukje Gallery (plus New York's James Cohan Gallery) united to bring video artist Bill Viola's work Ocean without a Shore to the Chiesa di San Gallo. Ghostly black-and-white figures emerge through a wall of water into full colour daylight, only to return again to the gloom. Unfortunately, the contemplation of these baptismal mysteries was rather spoilt by the noisy generator which kept springing rudely to life in the vestry, requiring the attention of the local fire brigade when I first visited. Meanwhile, in the ...
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The Minimalist Fringe

08-Nov-07

The Minimalist Fringe

Lee Ufan: Resonance Palazzo Palumbo Fossati Collateral Event in the 52nd Venice Biennale, 10 June - 21 November 2007 The Venice Biennale "Collateral Events" programme (Fringe, to you and me) is crammed with free exhibitions funded by generous sponsors. For example, while Tracy Emin flew the flag for Britain in the official British pavilion, there were fringe shows by Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish artists dotted around the islands. Lee Hyungkoo's work in the official Korean pavilion was complemented by émigré minimalist artist Lee Ufan, now resident in Japan. The exhibition, in a tired Palazzo near the Gritti palace, was jointly funded by the Korea and Japan Foundations. While much of the artwork elsewhere in Venice dealt with issues and problems of the real world, ...
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Pseudo-scientist inventing reality

07-Nov-07

Pseudo-scientist inventing reality

Lee Hyungkoo: The Homo Species Korean Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, 10 June - 21 November 2007 In a Biennale dominated by the theme of war, AIDS, destruction and desolation, it was comforting to find some of the country pavilions conforming to national stereotypes. The French pavilion dissected a love letter written by a rather callous man terminating a relationship with his mistress. The British pavilion, as befits a nation of shopkeepers, used the event as an opportunity for retail therapy: outside was a stall selling Tracy Emin memorabilia -- shopping bags and stick-on tattoos. The Koreans? Plastic surgery, obviously. Lee Hyungkoo's work in the Korean pavilion was influenced by his sense of physical inferiority when studying abroad in the US, surrounded by so ...
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