Future’s Future’s Future: Young Korean Artists at the KCC

The Korean Cultural Centre UK presents the 3rd annual exhibition of contemporary art by UK based Korean Artists. Future’s Future’s Future brings together the exciting and inspiring work of eight Korean artists, each living and working in the UK. Two years ago was Entry Forms; last year was Supervisions.

Jinkyun AHN | Jung Pyo HONG | Jung-Ouk HONG | Minae KIM | Jin Han LEE | Luna Jungeun LEE | Jung Wook MOK | Hyung Jin PARK

From 3 December 2010 to 19 February 2011 the exhibition FUTURE’S FUTURE’S FUTURE sees new contemporary art works from eight Korean artists, working in the UK.

“What Koreans are thinking about is the future. And the faster they can get there, the better” (Mark Schatzker, Art & Seoul, W magazine, Nov Issue, p.88). The word “future” holds a strong sense of optimism for these artists and each has responded to the theme in their own individual way.

The exhibition has been curated by Jeremy AKERMAN and Stephanie Seungmin KIM (KCC UK). Other participating nominators are Patricia BICKERS, James P. GRAHAM and JAMES PUTNAM.

The artists:

1. Jinkyun AHN

Jinkyun AHN is currently undertaking an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London. He has shown his works in many exhibitions and was selected in the first round of the Creative Quarterly 21. In his artworks, he constructs a temporary imitation cave in the form of a tent built with white cloth hung from the ceiling. He and his parents act out the allegory of the Plato’s cave with the use of shadow and projection. Although photography attempts to deliver reality, it is merely a form of chemical or electronic mimicry on a two-dimensional surface.

2. Jung Pyo HONG

Jung Pyo HONG completed an MFA in Sculpture, Hong-ik University in Seoul, South Korea. He has been currently participating in the residency programme, Cite International des Arts, Paris and was the winner of the 26th Joong Ang Fine Art Prize in 2004. His work begins from his sense of inferiority. To overcome it, he uses editorial processes as a way to create a coincidental outcome and that express his inferiority. Through the process he makes intended figures with unplanned marks, which can be both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, to let the audience overcome the difficulties in art.

3. Jung-Ouk HONG

Jung-Ouk HONG completed an MFA in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. He was selected as a finalist of the Guasch Coranty International Painting Prize 2010 (Barcelona, Spain) and the Bloomberg newcontemporaries 2009 (London, UK). HONG’s artwork appears to have functions and complexity beyond our immediate comprehension. He is fascinated with materials, plastics, wires, clothing tags and the mutation of a stretched canvas. Using common parts of everyday life, the mutated forms of works under the pull of gravity enhance psychological and physical elements of ‘basis’ and ‘harmony’ in the world.

4. Minae KIM

Minae KIM is currently undertaking an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. She presented a solo show, “Anonymous Scenes” in Seoul in 2008 and won the 2nd prize at the 29th Joongang Fine Arts Prize in 2007. Her works are based on familiar domestic street scenes, which have developed to the ‘anonymous scenes’ installations. With the works ‘continuous reflection’ and ‘telescope’ Kim introduces a clever illusion to profound questions about the nature of the spaces we inhabit and a circular world through which the whole world may be experienced but only in reflection.

5. Jin Han LEE

Jin Han LEE graduated with an MA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2008 and is now studying at Goldsmiths College. She was selected as a finalist of the Guasch Coranty International Painting Prize 2010 (Barcelona, Spain). Her landscape paintings attempt to combine both Renaissance perspective and Modernism flatness by challenging the figure and ground relationship. In the painted surface with masking tape, she juxtaposes the Renaissance background space with an obvious vanishing point and a Modernist object as a digitalised pixel images or painterly gestures.

6. Luna Jungeun LEE

Luna Jungeun LEE is currently studying an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London. She won the Travel Grant Art Prize 2009 and her artwork was selected as a Winning Piece of Work at the Seoul Metro Art Festival in 2009. She focuses on social structures and issues through her artworks. She especially, tries to express the truth of society in artworks and reconsiders what is the reality behind fantastic illusion. The objects she deals with are vulnerable and easily broken, even though the surface looks hard and tough. With that, she looks at the dualistic aspects of people’s perception in terms of making social constructions.

7. Jung Wook MOK

Jung Wook MOK completed a BA in photography at London College of Communication, University of Arts in 2010. He won the second prize of W Korea Magazine New Talented Artist Award in 2007. The series of photographs ‘Urban Topography Research’ attempts to reproduce the diverse moments of ‘explosive demolition’ as a significant symbolic event of transformation of an urban environment, which triggers the lost memory. Paradoxically, these seemingly instantaneous images of destruction require long exposure time from the camera and in fact they contain longing, nostalgia and a sense of regret.

8. Hyung Jin PARK

Hyung Jin PARK completed an MFA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL in 2010. He exhibited two solo shows in Seoul in 2000 and 2002. The delicate sculpture by PARK are made using scrunched up aluminum foil and resin, the foil is roughly fashioned into shapes of easily recognizable characters from art history and pop culture. Each work appears as a survivor; delicate, sensitive, struggling for breath and somewhat abject. His works raise questions about the defined existence and exhausted images and ideas.