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Category Archives: General arts news
A Park Soo-keun comes up for sale
30-Sep-08
"80% of Korean art buyers are pure speculators", says Juhl Joohyun Lee, director of Arario Gallery. And with Lee Kun-hee having stepped down from the chairmanship of Samsung and allegations flying that an illegal slush fund was used to buy works for his wife's Leeum museum, Samsung has stopped buying art. So says the FT (Korean buyers hit by chaos on the markets, 27 Sept 2008) in its report from the Korean International Art Fair last week. "Visitors were thin on the ground, and buyers even rarer."
Let's hope the current financial turmoil doesn't dim the appeal of one of Korea's most popular artists, Park Soo-keun. Having been in private hands since its original purchase in 1956, Park's painting of a ...
Call for Artists
15-Jun-08
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:
Download the application form
Recycled jeans raise $232,000
27-May-08
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 ...
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, ...
Study Korean and Japanese Art at SOAS
09-Dec-07
A great opportunity to find out more about Korean art: study towards a Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art.
[ad#small-horizontal]
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 ...
Asia Contemporary
22-Oct-07
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:
Lectures and seminars by leading experts and working artists
Visits to galleries and auction houses
Course Objectives:
To give an in-depth knowledge of contemporary Asian art, focusing on Indian, Pakistan, the Middle East, China, Japan and Korea.
To encourage students to relate to contemporary Asian art from both an academic and business viewpoint.
To allow students a unique opportunity to examine works of art from the British museums collections, currently not on show.
To offer students lectures by world renowned academics on their specialist subjects.
Provisional running order is as follows:
MONDAY ...
Asian Art in London - 10th year
21-Oct-07
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 ...
Watch the two videos below and tell me if you think one was influenced by the other.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojsQ4nLX2BA[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS3W9YOuh5A[/youtube]
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, ...
Fakes and curruption in art and academia
22-Jul-07
There has been a number of stories of fakes recently. Here's a brief round-up of links
1 Shin Jeong-ah.
Dongguk University Fires Bogus Professor, Korea Times, 20 July
Stroke of luck, raw talent fueled Shin's ascent, JoongAng Daily, 14 July. Some selected extracts:
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 ...
Surrender your jeans — win a beer
16-Jul-07
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 ...
New record price for Korean painting
29-May-07
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" ...
The last days of Daechuri
23-Mar-07
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:
The Gelken video at Daum.
Chris Gelken's blog
Days in Daechuri, the blog of the Save the Pyongtaek Farmers organisation
Save the Pyongtaek Farmers site
More pictures on the BBC site
BBC feature: eviction village - a farmer's tale
The art of Daechuri
16-Mar-07
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 ...
Feminism and women artists in Korean art
24-Feb-07
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.
Before the 20th century the occupation of being a professional artist went against the Confucian concept of an ideal wife. There were female artists, but they were privileged women who were able to become accomplished artists without having to stoop to earning money from their abilities - for example Princess Jeong Myeong (Daughter of king Seonjo), Ahn Dong Jang (안동장), and one ...
The Rise of the Korean Art Market
30-Jan-07
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 ...
But is it Art?
13-Dec-06
Encounters with Painters in North Korea
5pm SOAS, 8 December 2006
Koen De Ceuster, Centre for Korean Studies, Leiden University
"But is it Art"?: that was the question posed by Koen De Ceuster on Friday night at SOAS, as part of the series of talks held by the Centre for Korean Studies.
The talk started from the premise that the view of North Korean art held in the West is that it is bombastic Socialist Realism: propaganda pictures of the Leaders giving advice to rosy-cheeked workers building a Juche paradise. And that's predominantly what you see, for example, in Jane Portal's book, in the British Museum, and in numerous holiday snaps of North Korea. The almost unspoken presumption is that techniques and subject-matter are ...
The sale of contemporary Japanese and Korean ceramics at Bonhams on 7 November was the first time that a London auction had a focus on Korean work. As such, there was a lot of admiration from buyers as to the quality of the work, but when it came to putting hands in pockets buyers were more cautious. With limited past sale history to go on, the punters were unwilling to speculate.
I'm always disappointed when I go into a gallery and the nice young lady behind the counter starts talking about how well a particular artist has done at auction, and what a great investment this artist is going to be. Naively, I would like to think that people buy works ...
Those who enjoyed the Traditional Yet Contemporary exhibition during the Korean Festival this year may appreciate this one-day workshop at the British Museum on 9 September. While the focus is on Japanese work, there is a common thread with the exhibition earlier this year: Bernard Leach. One or two of his works were on display at the Air Gallery.
The BM workshop is sponsored by the Sainsbury Institute, who introduce the day as follows:
This workshop will reassess the impact of Mingei, Bernard Leach and the concept of "craft" in order to revitalise the debate on resonances between Japanese and British craft.
Sounds very similar to the objectives of the Traditional Yet Contemporary show. And as if to cement the link, Beth McKillop ...
New Korean gallery opens in Paris
03-Jun-06
For your weekend away in Paris, there's a new attraction. Steer clear of anything to do with the Da Vinci Code at the Louvre and instead go to the new museum of African & Asian cultures at Quai Branly. Thanks to David at www.kahoidong.com for a link to this article on the Yonhap site.
SEOUL, May 30 (Yonhap) -- France will open a museum next month in Paris that will showcase Korean art and civilization among its celebration of world cultures, France's top envoy in Seoul said Tuesday.
The Quai Branly Museum, located beside the Eiffel Tower and close to the Louvre, gears up for its opening after generating much anticipation in France and around the world for its dedication to arts ...
KOREAN CERAMICS: ARTS AND TECHNIQUES
TALK BY DAUPHINE SCALBERT
Thursday 25 May 2006, 6.30-7.30pm at Asia House
Dauphine Scalbert is a distinguished French potter who, having spent 6 years studying pottery and restoring antique ceramics in Korea, has Korean pots in her blood. Her copiously illustrated talk at Asia House last night was an interesting overview of the history of Korean ceramics. Of particular interest was her description and step-by-step studio pictures of the different decorative techniques in action. She also showed some images of some modern Korean ceramics. Scalbert tries to bring some of the simplicity and style of the Korean tradition to her own work. Her talk was extremely well-timed, in view of the contemporary Korean ceramics exhibition at the Air ...
Korean art the latest hot investment
03-Apr-06
Elton John made a shrewd 80% profit in one year on his investment in Korean art, according to the Chosun Ilbo. A photo by Bae Bien-u, From Pine Tree, bought last year for $27,000, was sold for $48,000 in New York's first ever auction of contemporary Korean art at Sotheby's last week.
Picture: From Pine Tree by Bae Bien-u, from Chosun Ilbo
Ceramics: Art or Craft?
08-Jun-05
Here's an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal from June 8 2005 by Karen Mazurkewich on the 3rd Ceramic Bienniale in Icheon, South Korea. Thanks to Aidan Foster-Carter for the link.
Rediscovering Korean ceramics
15-Apr-05
An article from the Wall Street Journal in the run-up to the 3rd World Ceramic Bienniale in 2005. Thanks again to Aidan Foster-Carter and his amazing powers of recall.
Memories of Moksokwon
03-May-00
Fond memories of a visit to Moksokwon sculpture park in Chejudo. I was lucky enough to be introduced to Baek Un-Ch'ol, who has masterminded the park. The main exhibits in the park are interesting pieces of driftwood, which Mr Baek has spent a lifetime collecting. He could earn a fortune by flogging them off in British garden centres, where such objects sell for a minimum of £100 each.
Mr Baek also has plans to develop a new Moksokwon, on a much larger site, over the next few years, and I wish him well with his project. Another side project of his is clay sculpture - here's an image of some of his clay figures which were sheltering behind an outbuilding in ...