Korea Craft Design Foundation at Collect 2013

COLLECT is an international art fair for contemporary museum-quality objects. It is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and for the first time this year there will be a stall presenting the best of Korean contemporary craft and design. The exhibition is at the Saatchi Gallery.

Korea Craft Design Foundation at Collect 2013

10 – 13 May, Stand no 7.4

Korea Craft & Design Foundation (KCDF) is a South Korean government organisation which promotes Korean craft and design internationally. For the first time, KCDF will be presenting the best of Korean contemporary craft at COLLECT at the Saatchi Gallery in London from 10 May to 13 May 2013.

Korean craft is known for its rich heritage of traditional skill and high quality workmanship. It is steeped in a thousand years of history, which has been both a gift and a sometimes binding responsibility for Korean crafts practitioners. In recent years however, a bold new movement of contemporary crafts people has been growing in South Korea. Pioneer artisans are translating their inherited skills in new ways. Young artists are adding their personal story and exploring the joy of technology within traditional craftsmanship.

KCDF have selected eight craft artists including master artisans, contemporary pioneers and emerging talents in ‘Ottchil’ (옻칠, Korean lacquerware), ceramics, silversmithing, textiles and jewellery to showcase Korean craft now. All artists are from diverse backgrounds and different generations, and all share common values in precision, inherited skills, and innovation. All are helping to shape the new character of Korean contemporary craft.

On Saturday 11th May at 4.30pm, Haecho Chung, the master of Korean lacquer ‘Ottchil’, will be demonstrating how he created a unique technique to achieve contemporary ‘Ottchil’.

Artists

Haecho Chung

Haecho Chung is a master in the Korean natural lacquer ‘Ottchil’ and leader of contemporary ‘Ottchil’ craftwork. ‘Ottchil’ is the actual process of applying the ‘Ott’ lacquer to woodwork – Chung has developed a unique technique using this finishing method as the artwork itself. The result is a living fluid that ‘breathes’ a mysterious lustre seen above.

Jucheol Yun

Juncheol Yun is an innovative ceramist who has created contemporary processe
inspired by traditional methods to create extremely tactile surfaces. His famous Cheomjang (protruding molecule technique) ceramics, applies slip and pigment with a brush onto a clay vessel more than a hundred times to achieve the sensational molecule covered surface.

Munkyung Kim

Munkyung Kim is a ceramist who creates oversized fruits and vegetables with a twist. Like the above Super Apple, where the artist has used a water-colour like method to gain a truely smooth surface in stark contrast to the myriad of sharp spikes exposed inside the fruit. This surrealistic still life sculpture reflects on how appearances can often be misrepresentations.

Myungsun Kim

Myungsun Kim is a ceramist and a painter who draws ‘Alice in Wonderland’ like stories onto her object surfaces. After hand crafting ceramics, the artist combines detailed hand drawing with airbrush techniques and uses vivid colours to create sensual illusions, which question dreams and reality. Red Capsule, to be shown at COLLECT tells the personal story of loss and cure (above).

Yeonsoon Chang

Yeonsoon Chang is an award winning textile artist who has been producing pioneering textile sculptures for 40 years. The artist works with materials like Korean traditional hemp and Abaca fibre, uses a natural indigo dyeing method and 12step process to create architectural-like structures. Her significant ‘Matrix’ series are made of layers to form a cube reminiscent of the human body and the layers of time.

Minsik Ahn

Minsik Ahn is a silversmith artist, fascinated by crafting silver tableware. A particular focus is the teapot. The artist highly values silverware for its great health benefits and believes in the balance between the aesthetic and function. Within Korean culture, a kettle is more widely used so the artist calls his teapot Kettle to remind us of the importance of function in his craftwork.

Hyunseok Sim

Hyunseok Sim trained in silversmithing and makes fully functioning cameras with silver. He makes each component and creates his own mechanical system to produce each camera, removing any unnecessary functions, to be used at the simplest level. The artist creates 21st Camera as a wholly analogue machine and is demonstrating that the technology can be hand crafted.

Jeemin Chung

Jeemin Chung is an emerging jewellery artist who employs hammering to make movable jewelry. The artist finds inspiration from nature, especially how plants sprout, grow, and die and views seeds as the beginning and end of living. Her exquisite engineering skill has the effect of making her fine jewellery ‘dance’, reflecting the growth of a seed and a wheel of circulation in nature.

Korea Craft & Design Foundation

Korea Craft & Design Foundation (KCDF) is a specialized organisation, under the Ministry of Culture & Sports & Tourism, founded to promote and develop the Korean craft and design industry. In this century of culture, Korean craft art is preparing to take a new take-off into the world.

KCDF arranges an easy encounter between excellent Korean craft and the public and actively pursues globalization of Korean craft in order to develop and distribute cultural craft goods carrying the cultural image of Korea internationally.

KCDF revives the heritage of Korean traditional craft that bears ancestral insight and wisdom, supports enthusiastic young craft artists and promotes cultural product companies in domestic and international markets.

Links:

• www.kcdf.kr
• www.craftscouncil.org.uk/collect

(automatically generated) Read LKL’s review of this event here.