36 Masters of Contemporary Art
Featuring Around 200 Works and 100 Archival Materials
On View at Seoul Museum of Photography Until March 1 Next Year
The Seoul Museum of Art announced on November 25 that it will hold its third special opening exhibition, "Everything Photography Can Do," at the Seoul Museum of Photography until March 1 next year.
Special Exhibition "Everything Photography Can Do" Interior View. Courtesy of Seoul Museum of Photography
This large-scale exhibition features over 300 works and materials by 36 masters of contemporary Korean art, who have used photography and photographic images as a medium for creation, displayed throughout the entire museum. It introduces around 200 works and 100 archival materials by 36 artists who represent contemporary Korean art, from Lee Seungtaek and Gurim Kim to Lee Inhyun.
The exhibition highlights how photography has been a key medium driving changes in contemporary Korean art. It particularly focuses on the artists' youth, when they used photography as a tool for avant-garde experimentation, reinterpreting existing formative systems and social realities.
From the experimental art generation of the 1960s, including Lee Seungtaek and Gurim Kim; to Seong Neungkyung and Kim Yongchul of the 1970s conceptual art group "S.T."; to Moon Bum, Kim Choonsoo, Seo Yongseon, and Ahn Gyucheol of "Seoul '80" in the 1980s; and Min Joungki and Shin Hakchul of "Reality and Utterance," the exhibition traces the journey of artists who used photography as a tool for thought, action, perception, and exploration of social reality. It sheds light on how they constructed a new avant-garde sensibility and visual language in Korean contemporary art from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Special Exhibition "Everything Photography Can Do" Interior View. Courtesy of Seoul Museum of Photography
The exhibition expands to include photomontage, photo-serigraphy, photo-sculpture, photo-picture, photo-media, photo-essay, and three-dimensional photo prints, tracking diverse trends that cross genre boundaries. In Exhibition Room 1, the focus is on the early 1960s, when the fervor of Art Informel was subsiding and new formative languages were being sought. Through the experimental attempts of five artists-Lee Seungtaek, Gurim Kim, Kim Chasub, Kwak Dukjun, and Lee Gyuchul-the exhibition highlights how photography evolved from a mere recording medium into an avant-garde expressive language encompassing concept, action, play, and formative experimentation.
Exhibition Room 2 concentrates on the role of photography in experimental art of the 1970s. Through the photo-based print media experiments of "S.T." members Kim Yongchul, Seong Neungkyung, Lee Geonyong, Jang Hwajin, and Choi Byungso, as well as Park Hyunki, Lee Kangso, Song Beonsu, and Han Woonsung of the "Daegu Contemporary Art Festival," the exhibition illustrates how photography was developed as a practice that traversed thought, structure, action, and medium during this period.
Exhibition Room 3 explores media experiments centered on photography that unfolded after the 1980s. Artists such as Lee Gyojun, Moon Bum, Lee Inhyun, Kim Choonsoo, Seo Yongseon, and Ahn Gyucheol used photography and the newly introduced slide projection works to investigate issues of perception, experience, and relationships, building a new formative sensibility that went beyond the painting-centered system.
Exhibition Room 4 showcases how, within the socially critical art of the 1980s centered on "Reality and Utterance," photographic images functioned as a powerful language for interpreting reality. The exhibition presents works by Kim Gunhee, Kim Yongtae, Kim Insun, Kim Junghun, Min Joungki, Park Bulttong, Son Jangsub, Shin Hakchul, Ahn Changhong, Yeo Un, Jung Dongseok, Kim Yongik, and Ahn Sangsoo, who reconstructed the history and sensibility of Korean society through the citation and rearrangement of photographic images.
This exhibition also unveils a significant number of previously unexhibited works and major pieces that have not been shown for a long time. Newly released works include Kim Myunghee's "Liminal 1, 3," which re-photographs photograms created in the 1970s by directly exposing the body to photosensitive paper under sunlight; Lee Kangso's double photo-serigraphy "Untitled" (1979); and Jung Dongseok's "From Seoul" (1982), which metaphorically documents the reality of Gwangju during the 5·18 Democratization Movement.
There will also be accompanying programs. Kwon Sanghae, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, will be invited to give two special lectures. These will be held on December 6 and 7 at the Seoul Museum of Photography's education room and the multipurpose hall of the Buk-Seoul Museum of Art. The lectures will examine experimental trends in the 1970s in Korea and Japan and explore the landscape of contemporary art shaped by the exchange and mutual reference between the two art worlds.
Choi Eunju, Director of the Seoul Museum of Art, emphasized, "This exhibition is a large-scale project that views photography as a core medium enabling artistic thought and experimentation. The new visual language that Korean artists have constructed through photography from the 1960s to the present will serve as an important foundation for the research and exhibitions that the Seoul Museum of Photography will continue in the future."
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