The British Council and the KCC are co-sponsoring an exhibition by artists of Korean origin working in the UK. The exhibition will be held in December 2008.
A Call for artists notice has been published on the KCC website. Applications are due in by 1 August 2008. Details from the KCC.
Links:
Last year the ceramic artists of North Gyeongsang province held an exhibition just off Regent Street entitled Millennium Dream, Millennium Light. This year they return to a gallery in New Malden – coinciding nicely with the first week of the New Malden Arts Festival.
As last year, the work will include that by renowned masters. Click on the image to the right for more information.
The exhibition is at New Days Gallery, 2 Alric Avenue, New Malden, KT3 4JN, 5-10 June. Opening hours 10am – 5pm.
Links
Records were tumbling at the Christie’s auction of contemporary Asian art in Hong Kong on 24 May. As was to be expected, most attention (and cash) was focused on Chinese artists, but auction records were also set for individual artists from Indonesia, India and South Korea.
One of the Korean artists featured was Choi So-young (b 1980), who has a show coming up at the Union Gallery later this year. Choi specialises in creating panoramic landscapes out of recycled denim. Her 3 meter wide cityscape (below) was sold for the equivalent of USD232,714.
The Union Gallery are still collecting your old jeans to be transformed into Choi’s next creation. See here for details.
Other artists whose work was sold last week were (images bottom, left to right):
Click on the thumbnails below and the image above to be taken to the relevant page of the Christie’s website.
Links:
Image credits: Christie’s Images Ltd
Beccy Kennedy reports
Britain’s first Triennial of Asian Art launched earlier this month, when a gaggle of global art goers gathered in the grandiose foyer and atrium of Manchester Art Gallery to preview the outstanding art installations from Korea. Of the five Asian countries selected by galleries in Manchester: China, India, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, the largest gallery chose striking art works by Korean artists, Gwon Osang and Choe U-ram.
Upon entering the foyer of Manchester Art Gallery, Gwon Osang’s shiny photo montaged life sized figures greet the visitor wearing their casual clothes and animated poses, as they stand, on their plinths on either side of the staircase. Gwon visited Manchester last year and was inspired by a performance by Mancunian musician, Graham Massey, so decided to model a Styrofoam sculpture on him, YAMAHA (left), commissioned by Manchester Art Gallery. Gwon, who is interested in how body language and hand gestures alternate between cultures, worked one to one with Massey to produce a ‘glocal’ cultural creation, uniting Mancunian cultural chic with the typically careful craftsmanship of a contemporary Korean artist. YAMAHA stands opposite Control (bottom), a young Korean male, complimenting and contrasting Massey, clad in similarly casual gear but with a puzzlingly different pose. Gwon covers his figures with hundreds of snap shots of the model which include every separate part of the figure’s body, fused together on the surface of the sculpture to form a holistic yet slightly disjointed visual assimilation. Does this signify the complexity of our human biological mechanisms and the similarity of our genetic makeup across nations? Or, perhaps it represents the fractured and hyper-realistic nature of our identity formations in an increasingly media orientated globe.
Similarly surreal in outlook, are two mechanized metallic organisms from Choe U-ram’s extraordinary animal empire (right). Urbanus Male and Urbanus Female (below) co-habit the upper echelon of the gallery’s atrium. Suspended from the roof, like dinosaur skeletons, the two fictional creatures move interactively at regular intervals, catching the viewer unaware. Visitors have reportedly fallen in love with the robotic romance of these silver skinned structures, whose particular habitation requirements and personalities are described in the accompanying labeling. Not dissimilar in theme and style to Lee Hyungkoo’s faux-scientific sculptures, Choe creates creatures from naturalistic looking shapes, whose intangible familiarity is juxtaposed with the familiar intangibility of museum and mass media reduced science. Lee and Choe share this thoughtful mix of contemporary cultural commentation and stunning workmanship. Lee’s sculptures were the focus of the Venice Biennial 2007, and here, Choe’s works were the feature within the space for the opening speeches of Asia Triennial Manchester.
Choe U-ram: Urbanus Female (photo: Caroline Bradley)
The Tri/biennial phenomenon has been shaping and been shaped by the international contemporary art scene, increasingly, over the past twenty years. Art critics are sceptical of the ‘pick a country’ approach to representing global art, or curatorial themes which aim to characterize a particular continent or nation’s cultural attributes. Asia Triennial Manchester 08, organised by the Asian arts agency Shisha, aimed to keep the artistic themes open, around the issue of ‘protest’ reflecting how individual artists use dissent in their work. Perhaps, this protest is also manifested within Shisha’s own autonomic approach to the triennial, as they have decentralised the omnipotent chief curator’s voice and gaze, and offered the microphone and magnifying glass to a range of curators, artists and members of the public, through a number of educational events and symposia. Issues such as the global/local have been explored at Castlefield Gallery’s ATM08 symposia series, whilst questions of the commercialisation and labelling of ‘Asian Art’ were raised at the Shisha / Manchester Metropolitan University conference on 4th April, ‘Protest: Reflections and Revolutions,’ by academics such as S. Sayid and Hou Hanru.
Asia Triennial Manchester has traversed the difficulties raised by the prescriptive visual documentation of ‘Asian Art,’ partly through its own self categorisation as an ‘Asia Triennial’, rather than a Triennial of ‘the Asian.’ The latter term, could instigate crude and undignified issues of ‘compare and contrast’ between Asian countries and ultimately suggest an outdated notion of nation or continent. Gwon Osang’s and Choe U-ram’s installations suggest they work as global artists, using global materials and inter-cultural or supernatural subject matter. Their themes, styles and techniques descend the neat narratives of national difference and highlight the plethora of issues encountered and aroused by artists from Korea.
Gwon Osang will also present a solo exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery from 21 June – 21 September 2008.
Urbanus Male and Urbanus Female will exhibited in the gallery’s atrium space from 5 April to 21 September 2008.
Beccy Kennedy is a course leader for the Asia Triennial Manchester related course, ‘An Introduction to Contemporary Asian Art’ at Cornerhouse, Manchester. On 18 June, Beccy will lecture on issues of Colonial Modernity and post-modernity in 20thC art from Korea, and on 25 June, she will explore the contemporary implications of Socialist Realist poster art in DPRK (North Korea).
A great opportunity to find out more about Korean art: study towards a Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art.
Study Korean and Japanese Art at SOAS — April — July 2008
The former British Museum postgraduate diploma course in Asian Art will now be offered at SOAS from 2008. Korea and Japan are seen in their Asian context,particularly in their relationship with each other and, above all, with China (right). The programme is object based, with the special study of objects, prints and paintings from the collections of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum while lectures are given by leading experts.
The Korea and Japan module will run for 12 weeks from April 2008, covering the artistic heritage of Korea and Japan from the prehistoric periods to the present day. While the major part of the course is dedicated to Japan, the first weeks of the module focus on Korea.
Korea’s artistic heritage will include tomb artefacts, buddhist sculpture and paintings, crafts and ceramics. The Japanese part of the module begins with prehistoric and early historic periods when links between these two countries were strong. The course moves from the 7th to the 15th centuries, with the study of masterpieces in sculpture and painting. The later part of the course focuses, not only on paintings and popular prints, but also a wide variety of decorative arts and crafts, with an emphasis on techniques and aesthetics.
Various thematic topics will be followed, such as architecture and gardens, the arts of the tea ceremony, and East-West cross-cultural influences, particularly in export ceramics. Artistic expression will be viewed against the relevant social and political background as well as the religious and literary movements of each period. Visits to museum collections will provide an opportunity for object study to complement a course which combines academic discipline and practical skills. Students are not required to have any knowledge of the arts of Asia, but should have a serious interest in the study of the area.
Students successfully completing any three 12 week modules, selected from the Arts of China (January); the Arts of Japan & Korea (April), the Arts of the Islamic world (April) or the Arts of India (September), will be awarded a university accredited Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art.
Further Details from: Dr Heather Elgood: he2 [AT] soas [DOT] ac [DOT] uk.
Links:
Designed to coincide with Asian Art in London, there’s an intensive five-day course at SOAS, University of London, focusing on Asian Contemporary Art. Well worth exploring if you have the opportunity:
ASIA CONTEMPORARY
5th — 9th November 2007
Course includes:
Course Objectives:
Provisional running order is as follows:
MONDAY 5th November
09.30 REGISTRATION & WELCOME
10.00 INDIAN CONTEMPORARY 1 (Savita Apte)
11.30 INDIAN CONTEMPORARY 2 (Savita Apte)
14.00 MY WORK by Indian contemporary artist (Dilip Sur)
16.00 INDIAN CONTEMPORARY handling collection V&A (Divya Patel)TUESDAY 6th November
10.00 PAKISTAN CONTEMPORARY (Savita Apte)
11.30 MIDDLE EASTERN CONTEMPORARY ART (Camilla Canellas)
14.00 MY WORK by Middle Eastern contemporary artist (Mustafa Ja’far)
15.30 CHINESE ART MARKET (Iain Robertson)WEDNESDAY 7th November
10.00 HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT OF CHINESE CONTEMPORARY PAINTING (Michael Sullivan)
11.30 CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS IN CHINA (Elaine Buck)
14.00 MY WORK by contemporary Chinese artist (Weimin He)THURSDAY 8th November
10.00 CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE ART (Suzanne Perrin)
11.30 MY WORK by contemporary Japanese artist (Yukki Yaura)
14.00 CONTEMPORARY KOREAN ART (Jiyoon Lee)
FRIDAY 9th November10.00 ISLAMIC ART MARKET (Dalya Islam)
11.00 PANEL DISCUSSION (Mustafa Ja’far, Dilip Sur, Jiyoon Lee, Hana Malallah, Laila Shawa, Savita Apte)
14.00 CONTEMPORARY SOUTH ASIAN ART GALLERY (Aicon Gallery) (Savita Apte)
15.30 CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART GALLERY (Rossi & Rossi)
17.00 CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART GALLERY (Olyvia Oriental)Class Dinner
The course is led by Dr Heather Elgood from the British Museum’s education department. The other lecturers are as follows:
- Elaine Buck has a PhD from the University of London in Chinese art and archaeology. She teaches Chinese art history from the University of Reading, is tutor for the China module on the British Museum Asian Art Diploma course and is a freelance lecturer.
- Mustafa Ja’far is a graphic designer who specialises in Arabic calligraphy. He conducts workshops on Arabic calligraphy across the country, including in the British Museum, the British Library and Birkbeck College.
- Mary Ginsberg is the acting assistant keeper, Department of Asia, British Museum.
- Savita Apte is a freelance lecturer and is currently doing a PhD at SOAS.
- Suzanne Perrin studied Japanese traditional art at Nagoya University of Art. She is currently a visiting lecturer at University of Cape Town, South Africa and Brighton University of Art and Design.
- Dilip Sur is well known contemporary Indian artist and has work in private and public collections around the world. Dilip Sur teaches at the Royal College of Art, London as well as taking part in many solo and group exhibitions.
- Iain Robertson has a PhD on the emerging art markets of Greater China at City University, London. In addition to over eighty articles for the arts press, a book, ‘Understanding international art markets’, appeared in early 2005. Currently is part of the faculty of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
- Jiyoon Lee is an independent curator and art critic who curated, organised and fundraised for contemporary art exhibitions in numerous venues in Europe and Far East Asia. She has also worked as lecturer for Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul Korea for the past years. She is also an active correspondent and writer, having published more than 50 articles and papers in art journals
The cost of this 5 day course is £500.
Please contact Dr Heather Elgood for further details
Email: he2[AT]soas[DOT]ac[DOT]uk
Tel: 02078984445
Asian Art in London is an annual event which unites London’s leading Asian art dealers, major auction houses and societies in a series of gallery selling exhibitions, auctions, receptions, lectures and seminars. These are complemented by exhibitions at the leading museums. This is its tenth year and it runs from 1 - 10 November 2007.
There’s a wide variety of galleries and dealers participating, and many of them claim to be showing some Korean work. Similarly, if you visit the Asian Art in London site and search for “Korea”, there’s quite a long list potential buying opportunities. I emailed the dealers who came up on the list, and whittled the list down to the following who really do have Korean work for sale during that week:
David Baker Oriental Art
29 New Bond Street
London
W1S 2RL
Tel: +44 (0)20 7493 5165
David Baker will have a small group of Korean ceramics and works of art from the Koryo and Chosen periods. Pieces will be available from a few hundred pounds for representative ceramics from both periods. The show opens on Monday 5th November at 5 pm and runs throughout Asia Week when the gallery will be open from 10 am to 6 pm. Here’s a foretaste of the Korean work:
Gregg Baker Asian Art
142 Kensington Church Street
London
W8 4BN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7221 3533
While Gregg Baker specialises mainly in Japanese and Chinese screens, he does have two Korean screens in stock at the moment.
J.A.N. Fine Art
132 - 134 Kensington Church Street
London
W8 4BH
Tel: +44 (0)20 7792 0736
Website: http://www.jan-fineart-london.com
J.A.N. will have a Choson blue and white bamboo decorated vase and a large waterdropper (above right), together with some scholars objects, such as seals and ink stones.
Here’s a Chosun dynasty wedding duck from the Korean page on their website:
Bonhams
101 New Bond Street
London
W1S 1SR
Tel: +44 (0)20 7468 8248
Bonhams will have on Koryo and two Choson dynasty vases at their 5 November sale (no 14759), plus a 19th century “Korean School” landscape painting. Unfortunately last year’s contemporary Korean ceramics auction will not be repeated this year.
And finally, my own personal favourite…
Linda Wrigglesworth Ltd
By appointment only:
37C York Street
Marylebone
London W1H 1PW
Tel: +44 (0)20 7486 8990
Linda Wrigglesworth specialises in Chinese, Tibetan and Korean costume and textiles, and has now branched out into designing modern clothes which draw their inspiration from the far east. She will be showing some fine hanbok, some 19th century wrapping cloths (pojagi - example above right) and the thing I have my own eye on, a 19th century yangban’s robe:
Links:
There were moon jars a-plenty at the British Museum on Saturday: old and new, whole and smashed, real and fake and, as is the nature of these objects, none of them perfectly spherical.
In pride of place in Room 3, just as you enter the museum, is one of the prized items in the British Museum’s Korean collection, the Chosun dynasty vase - around 300 years old - picked up by Bernard Leach in Seoul in the 1930s. Surrounding the vase are other objects and displays to give it context:
Gina Ha-Gorlin (left), who curated the display and masterminded the whole Chuseok day at the BM, gave a gallery talk explaining all these connections, also explaining why the making of a moon jar is so difficult - and why the majority of them end up being smashed. A video in display on the side wall demonstrated a modern moon jar being made (and destroyed).
Earlier in the day, we had seen a pristine moon jar being smashed by its “maker”, a soil-besmirched member of the experimental performing arts group KOPAS, who together with percussion group Dulsori had drawn a large crowd outside the museum with a creative performance (right) centred on the making of a moon jar.
We had also seen a brief performance centred around a moon jar, inside in the BM’s great court, accompanied by a gayageum (right).
What I had missed earlier on was an unusual exhibit in the Korean gallery itself, upstairs. Taking advantage of the absence of the real thing, artist Shin Mee-kyung had created a replacement moon vase out of soap. The work, entitled “Translation - Moon Vase” was well-disguised in the gallery, and continues Shin’s playful theme of “translating” valuable museum pieces.
Of the three moon jars featured in the main pictures in this post, one is the “genuine” Chosun dynasty article, one was made in the last couple of years by Park Young-sook, and one was made this year out of soap by Shin Mee-kyoung. Which is which?
Answers soon.
Links:
Trackback:
The story goes that Bernard Leach, browsing in a Seoul antiques store in the mid 1930s, came across a Choson dynasty Moon Jar and held his head in disbelief at its beauty. And, after one of the more inspired impulse buys in recent art history, he walked out of the shop “carrying a piece of happiness” [1]. That Jar now resides in the British Museum as one of the highlights of its Korean collection.
From 20 September for six weeks, that piece of happiness will be the British Museum’s “Object in Focus”. Gina Ha-Gorlin, Arts Council Fellow at the museum, has planned an exhibition in room 3 (at the entrance to the museum) which includes not just the Jar itself but also modern works inspired by it, including work by Kim Whanki - one of Korea’s best known twentieth century artists - and a contemporary moon jar by Park Young-sook. There will be a gallery talk at 1:15pm on 22 September, the day of the Chuseok festivities at the Museum.
When you go, be sure also to visit the Korean gallery itself, where some of Paik Nam-June’s video work is on display.
Links:
Watch the two videos below and tell me if you think one was influenced by the other.
The top video is a new TV commercial for a new variant of the chewy sweet formerly known as Opal Fruits. The commercial is produced by London advertising agency TBWA according to Advertolog. Art director Tom Chancellor has the ad on his site.
The bottom video is the creation of video artist June Bum Park. He’s been doing work showing people being manipulated by giant hands for at least a couple of years as far as I’m aware. I first saw his work at the presentation of Korean video art shown at the British Museum during the London Korean Festival in 2005. The above work, “Parking” was shown during the “Exposed” event in London in May last year. The rather bad copy above was apparently taken by a visitor to the Alllooksame?/Tuttuguale? exhibition in Torino, Italy earlier this year.
Update:
It’s taken a while, but here is some more information on the artists and artisans from Gyeongsangbuk-do who were exhibiting in Mayfair earlier this year. It’s a shame that their sojourn was so brief. The quality and interest of their work was equal to that displayed in the Traditional Yet Contemporary exhibition last year, and yet while last year’s show stuck around for a couple of weeks on display and then re-appeared at the Bonhams auction later in the year, this year’s exhibition was here for a couple of days and was gone in a flash. And it was particularly a shame that this year’s exhibits did not stay around for longer given that the exhibition space was brighter, and the work had greater variety — in particular featuring some textile work as well as ceramics.
From the talk accompanying last year’s exhibition, you might have been forgiven for thinking that Park Young-sook had a unique ability to reproduce the Chosun-dynasty moon jars. Well, a tough challenge it undoubtedly is, but Park does not have a monopoly on that talent. Two of the ceramists in the Millennuim Dream show, Kim Jeong-ok and Lee Hak-cheon, also exhibited moon jars, one of which was displayed prominently in the window.
Kim Jeong-ok (ê¹€ì •ì˜¥, above) is designated as national Intangible Cultural Asset # 105. Apart from his moon jar, the work he exhibited was buncheon vases and bottles, together with smaller-scale tea bowls, some of which had a distinctive red copper underglaze.
The red copper underglaze was also a speciality of Lee Hak-cheon (ì´í•™ì²œ, above), a provincial intangible cultural asset.
Cheon Han-bong (천한봉), the second provincial intangible cultural asset in the exhibition, is still innovating after 60 years of potting, with two patent applications pending for glaze techniques. Cheon’s work on show was smaller individual pieces of stoneware and some desirable tea sets.
Kim Jae-cheol (ê¹€ìž¬ì² ), who is still under 50 years old, has nevertheless managed to win Gyeongsangbuk-do’s best tourist something award fifty times. His work at the show was certainly different. To say it had novelty value would cheapen it — better to say that it’s the sort of work which would make a superb gift. His grinning brush-holders and unusual shaped vases are both different and very portable.
Finally, the textile work of Choi Ok-ja (최옥ìž) provided an interesting contrast in the basement of the gallery. One wall was taken up with her huge “Silk Road” (above right), while in an alcove a peaceful blue and white hanging gave a restful aura to the space.
Congratulations to Justina Jang of the KPCAUK for pulling this exhibition together at such short notice. Millennium Dream, Millennium Light, featuring the ceramic and textile artists of Gyeongsangbuk-do, was on at ArtSpace Galleries 15-17 June 2007.
There has been a number of stories of fakes recently. Here’s a brief round-up of links
1 Shin Jeong-ah.
- Shin Jeong-ah was 23 when the 1995 collapse of the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul buried her in darkness. She lay in the rubble for 24 hours before getting plucked out. Shin was one of the few survivors of the worst collapse in Korean history, which killed more than 500 people. From the day of the collapse on, Shin said she vowed to change. Instead of being shy and reclusive, she developed an aggressive, extroverted personality.
- “She just tried to organize exhibitions of only big-name artists to draw the public’s attention.”
- “Her exhibitions rarely featured any new or local talent. She concentrated on getting ‘the spotlight exhibitions’ from well-known foreign artists.”
- “From time to time, people raised suspicions about her background,” said the head of a private museum, on condition of anonymity. “But the rumor was that she was acquainted with the most influential people and that nobody should dare dig into the suspicion.”
- “The fine art community, which puts a priority on background rather than capability, and the media, which scrambled to lift her reputation without verifying anything, are both at fault”
- Jung Woo-taek, an art history professor at Dongguk, claimed Shin was given special favors when she was hired in the art history department in September 2005.
“There were objections from professors at that time since she studied Western art history, but our department teaches Buddhist art history,” said Jung, who was the head of the department at the Buddhist university in 2005. “But the school unilaterally made the decision to hire her.”
Shin claimed to have a Ph.D. from Yale earned in April 2005, and she also submitted what she said was her dissertation about the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. The dissertation was found to be almost identical to a previously published work by someone else.
- A rising star in her field, Shin, 35, was about to add another title to her impressive resume on July 4 when she was named the artistic co-director of the 2008 Gwangju Biennale, Korea’s biggest arts event.
The official announcement was slated for Monday. Only one problem. Shin has just been caught falsifying her academic records, including her claim to hold a doctorate from Yale University and two degrees from the University of Kansas.
2 Lee Ji-young (right): Famous English Teacher a Fraud, Korea Times, 19 July
3 Press comment on the above:
- In Korea, it is not rare for academics or instructors to come to fame based on false academic certificates or backgrounds
4 Massive Corruption Scandal Rocks Korea’s Art Community, Chosun, 17 May 2007:
A police investigation has revealed that many winners of the Grand Art Exhibition of Korea, the country’s largest art contest, were chosen through bribery and corruption.
The shocking investigation involves 36 officials with the Korea Fine Arts Association (KFA), the country’s leading arts organization, 20 art professor judges, and other influential organizations and individuals.
5 The Canadian English teacher, known only as “J”, who faked a BA to get a job in Korea.
6 Update 21 August 2007. Professors routinely pass substandard work, says Sungkyunkwan University art professor Jung Jin-soo in the Chosun.
Some 60-70 percent of advanced degree holders in Korea are unqualified, and professors are to blame for approving substandard work
7 Academic degrees under closer scrutiny, JoongAng Daily, 23 August 2007. Some extracts:
- Jolted by the bogus degree scandal triggered by one of its former art professors, Dongguk University said yesterday it will conduct education and career background checks on all faculty members.
- Sungkyunkwan University also said yesterday that it canceled the master’s and doctoral degrees it had awarded to Kim Ock-rang, the well-known CEO of the DongSoong Art Center and one of the most influential figures in Korea’s art world. Kim, who was also an art management professor of Dankook, had submitted a fake undergraduate diploma to enter the university’s graduate school in 1997, the school said.
- With the scandals growing, the Korea Council for University Education said it will establish a degree verification center.
Other links:
Doesn’t sound a very good deal, huh? But let me explain further. Korean artist Choi So-young specialises in creating work out of denim. She’s going to be exhibiting at the Union Gallery in 2008… but she needs the raw materials to work with.
So the deal is this: YOU can be part of a collaborative, interactive art-making making experience. Or something like that. Send in your jeans to the Union Gallery — or any old denim articles you don’t want any more — and they will be transformed into a work of art. And YOU will be invited to the party celebrating the launch of the exhibition as a mark of gratitude.
I know the Union Gallery does great parties. I went to a crazy one involving lots of black ink being hurled onto T-shirts to the accompaniment of some live heavy metal music. It was a blast. And because Jari Lager, the boss, is of German extraction the hot dogs were superb as well.
Links:
I apologise to the ceramists and textiles artists of North Gyeongsang Province for going to their exhibition armed only with my mobile phone. And unfortunately there aren’t any press materials with images of the high quality work on show.
From the above photo you can just about tell that the vase in the front has a red underglaze, but unfortunately you have to see the thing in person to see the richness of the colour.
In the thumbnails below there’s a small vase with a beautiful mountain design, and a large silk wall-hanging. The whole gallery is flooded with light and my little mobile phone cannot convey the sense of space and colour which abounds.
I’ll edit this post with more information when I have time, but I wanted to get this inadequate version up on the web right now to encourage you to go along to ArtSpace Galleries, 18 Maddox Street, near Oxford Circus. The exhibition started yesterday and closes tomorrow. So go now. Entry free.
Every few months there’s another news item in the Korean press about a new domestic record price paid at auction for a Korean painting. And each time, the artist is Park Soo-keun (Bak Su-geun, 박수근) (1914-1965).
The most recent record was set this month (22 May), at W4.52bn:
Park Soo-keun: A Wash Place (Oil on canvas, 37 x 72 cm)
The previous record was for Park Soo-keun’s “Woman at a Marketplace” (24.9 x 62.4 cm) which sold for W2.5 billion at K Auction in March:
Park’s paintings are also in demand internationally. His “Leisure Time” fetched $1.128 million at Christie’s in New York on 24 March 2003, according to the International Herald Tribune, just exceeded a year later by his “Seated Woman and Jar” which fetched $1,239,500.
With prices rising, it’s natural that the unscrupulous try to make a quick buck. Park Soo-keun was one of the artists whose work was forged by a multi-million forgery ring busted earlier this year.
Links:
Gallerie Besson, 15 Royal Arcade, 28 Old Bond Street, London W1S 4SP
25 April - 24 May 2007
Professor Roe Kyung-jo (노경조) made a rare appearance in London yesterday for the opening of his exhibition at Galerie Besson.
Roe’s work was on display in London last year as part of the Traditional Yet Contemporary exhibition at the Air Gallery, and for me his marbled vase was one of its highlights. What is new in this solo exhibition, apart obviously from the greater number of works, is that some of his early oil paintings are for sale alongside his ceramic work.
Look at some of his paintings and they could almost be close-up views of his vases. The same muted colours, almost the same textures, and inspiring the same feeling of peacefulness as you stand in front of them. Some are abstract in composition, while there’s also a self portrait and a portrait of his sister which has echoes of Modigliani, and two impressionistic paintings of his high school (left), painted in 1973 at the age of 22.
Roe is best known, of course, for his ceramics, and he is professor in the Ceramics department in the College of Design at Seoul’s Kookmin University. He is known as the “master of Yeollimun ceramic”, according to the catalogue notes by curator Miyoung von Platen (장미ì˜):
Yeollimun is a traditional Korean ceramic technique meaning marbleware. Marbleware seems to have originated in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). Korean marbleware had different designs from those used in China, it was less prolific and thus little has been written about it. Yeollimun ceramics appeared in the Koryo Dynasty (935-1392 AD), but owing to the difficulties in making them, nearly disappeared in the 13th century.
The full range of the works on show can be found on the gallery website (links below) but you really need to see them in real life to experience them to the full. There’s the earthiness of the unglazed vases - my own personal favourites are pictured below, the swirling designs in the pastel colours giving endless pleasure - while the glazed ones have the irregular patterns of tiny cracks that you expect to find on a celadon. All of the vases have that slightly imperfect geometry (edges not quite straight, faces slightly convex or concave rather than perfectly flat) which make you want to contemplate them from different angles, to pick them up and handle them.
Well worth a visit. Gallery open weekdays only, 10-5:30.
Links:
As a follow up to my previous post linking to Bum Lee’s project, here’s a link to a short film made by Chris and Shirley Gelken at Daechuri last weekend. Well worth a look. There’s some great written coverage and photos on their blogs. A sample of Chris’s photos is shown above. See the full set in the sites below.
Links:
Many thanks to David Kilburn for pointing out a video project by Bum Lee, animation artist and illustrator. It’s a short film that he shot at Daechuri, a farming village which is to be evacuated to make way for the expanded US base at Pyongtaek.
David’s take:
I found it creative both in film making and social commentary, and revealing in how the farmers use folk art and events to promote their cause.
And Bum Lee’s statement:
I visited Daechuri on Saturday March 3. Behind the perimeter of fences guarded by police, many of the homes had been demolished and the unharvested fields were trenched off with barbed wire. But there was art everywhere amidst the ruin — murals, sculptures, junk art, and a gallery filled with paintings. The villagers held their nightly candlelight vigil in a hall surrounded by painted portraits, and in the evening they sang songs around a bonfire.
This video is a tribute to the art of Daechuri.
The video can be found here, here or here. The first of the links works best for me. Here’s the YouTube:
Ruediger Frank at the Korean Studies portal has the following interesting observations:
What I would rather like to highlight is a technical issue of coding. If you take your time to compare the Korean lyrics with the English subtitles, you find some interesting, subtle deviations. The song reminded me of my time at the Kodae campus, where similar ones were sung on Mayday etc. to demonstrate the student’s solidarity with the working class. Interestingly, the English translation seems to carefully avoid using Marxist terminology. Jabonga (capitalist or bourgeois) is simply “rich”, nongmin haebang (peasant’s liberation) is translated as “justice and dignity for all farmers” (and so is nodong haebang, worker’s liberation), i sesang juindeuri ireona (owners of this world, rise) reads “the powerless shall rise”, and “saengsaneui gibbeum” (the joy of production) is translated as “the joy of harvest”. At one point the translation goes further as the original, when yangju is translated as “American wine”. A very good idea, in my opinion, is the translation of bureun giwajib (house with blue roof tiles) simply as “capital”, at least in the given context; Blue House might have left non-Korean listeners clueless.
Lecture 5 in Jiyoon Lee’s Art & Society in Modern Korea course.
Big caveat: a very simplistic and immature summary, prepared by someone with limited knowledge or understanding of these things, of a very brief lecture covering a huge topic. Treat with extreme caution. Posted here as a “stub” (in Wiki terms) which I might build on in the future.
The work of four female artists was featured: Na Hye-seok (나혜석), Chun Kyeong-ja (천경자), Lee Bul and Lee Hye-rim.
Na Hye-seok was the best-known of the woman artists to emerge in the 1920s and 30s. Na became better known for her short novels such as Kyunghui (1918) and Doll’s House (1921) which were more feminist in outlook. Her art itself was fairly mainstream in character. Her self-portrait is reproduced here —>
Links:
The Korea Times records how the Korean Art market is beginning to boom. Perhaps carried on the coat-tails of the ebullient Chinese art market, prices for major Korean artists are edging up. Lee Ufan is one of the hot artists, and also Park Soo-keun, Kim Whanki and Chang Uc-chin. And last year Elton John made a nice return on a Bae Bien-u photograph.
An important indicator of the rise in the Korean Art market is the increasing exposure of contemporary artists in the West. Taking the UK as an example, the current Asia House show is one of the first exhibitions to have invited Korean artists to participate, with works specially commissioned for the show. And 2007 will see no less than 3 invitation shows by Korean arti
