《영원한 깜빡임: 한국의 현대미술》

전시일자: 2010.02.21-04.09

장소: Hawaii University Art Gallery 

주관: 대학미술협의회

공동주관: 하와이대학교

후원: 한국국제교류재단

기획: 진휘연

참여작가: 조덕현, 김창겸, 김태호, 곽남신, 서용선, 설원기, 배병우, 장화진, 정종미, 강애란, 김용식, 구본창, 권희연, 이상봉, 이기봉, 유근택, 윤동천, 윤영석

Foreword

Lisa A. Yoshihara

Director

University of Hawai'i Art Gallery

The University of Hawai'i Art Gallery is pleased to host Eternal Blinking: Contemporary Art of Korea organized by the Korea College Association of Art, a non-profit academic association of artist/faculty from leading art universities in Korea. This exhibition features 18 contemporary artists from Ewha Women's University, Korea National University of Arts, Korea University, KyungWon University, Seoul Institute of the Arts, Seoul National University, Seoul Women's University, SookMyung Women's University, Sungkyun-Kwan University, and SungShin Women's University.

Many of the artists selected are from the generation that experienced first hand the dramatic historical transformation of modern Korea, from turbulent history of authoritarian military regimes to dramatic democratization and flourishing industrial development on the world stage. Eternal Blinking: Contemporary Art of Korea is a great opportunity for Hawai'i, with its strong Korean and Asian communities to learn how Korean artists respond through a range of media and style to this historical experience.

The University of Hawai'i Art Gallery is grateful to the Korea College Association of Art for this opportunity to further the University of Hawaii's mission to broaden intercultural and educational exchange for students, faculty, and the community. As a distinguished resource in Asian-Pacific affairs, the UH Art Gallery presents a varied exhibition program broadly representative of the disciplines within the Department of Art and Art History and regularly features the curatorial research and publications of the art history and studio faculty.

Through its Special Exhibition Program, the UH Art Gallery has coordinated national and international exhibitions of contemporary and historical work. Many of these special exhibitions have focused on the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and Malaysia. The UH Art Gallery has been a leader in community collaborations to host international cultural exchanges of contemporary art: East-West Ceramics Collaborations, Crossings 2003: Korea/Hawai'i, and Crossings '97 France/Hawai'i.

Eternal Blinking: Contemporary Art of Korea is a continuation of a remarkable relationship developed in 2003 when the University of Hawai'i Art Gallery, The Contemporary Museum, and the Honolulu Academy of Arts organized Crossings 2003: Korea/Hawai'i to commemorate the Centennial of Korean Immigration to the United States. Nine galleries and museums in Honolulu and on the island of Maui featured the work of 56 artists, making Crossings 2003 the largest collaborative project ever undertaken by art organizations and museums in Hawaii.

DuckHyun Cho, Changkyum Kim, TaiHo Kim, NamSin Kwak, YongSun Suh, and WonGi Sul were among the participating artists in 2003 and we are honored by their return. The UH Art Gallery also welcomes BienU Bae, HwaJin Chang, JongMee Jung, AiRan Kang, YongSik Kim, BohnChang Koo, HeeYeon Kwon, SangBong Lee, KiBong Rhee, GeunTaek Yoo, DongChun Yoon, and YoungSeok Yoon.

My deepest appreciation to Dr. WhuiYeon Jin, from SungShin Women's University for her curatorial work and to WonGi Sul for initiating the dialogue. I thank each of the artists for participating in this wonderful proiect and sharing their work with Hawai'i. Their generosity is gratefully appreciated in the continuing exchange between our institutions.

※ 출처: Lisa A. Yoshihara, 「Foreword」, 『영원한 깜빡임: 한국의 현대미술』, 하와이대학교, 2010

Eternal Blinking: Contemporary art of Korea

영원한 깜빡임: 한국의 현대미술

진휘연 (성신여자대학교, 미술사학과 교수)

1950~53년까지 전 국토를 황폐화시켰던 한국전쟁의 거대한 폭풍 후에 온 나라는 회복을 위한 잠재기를 갖는다. 가난한 그 시절, 당장의 끼니를 걱정했던 한국은 그러나 60년대, 70년대를 거치면서 빠르고 급격한 경제성장을 이루어낸다. 1980년대 후반에 이르자, 궤도에 오른 경제성장을 바탕으로 사회, 문화, 예술의 제반문제들이 좀 더 자유로운 새로운 시각을 통해 변화하게 된다. 군사문화가 조금씩 후퇴하자, 미술계에서도 빠르게 탈정치화가 정착되고, 한국을 넘어 세계적인 기준과 쟁점들을 살피면서, 한국 작가들은 세계 여러 곳에서 높은 평가를 받기시작하고, 세계와의 교류가 왕성하게 진행된다.

이번 전시는 고도성장과 문화의 격동기를 겪어나갔던, 이제는 장년층에 속하는 한국의 대표 작가들의 작품을 중심으로 이루어졌다. 이들은 사회적 변화의 빠른 속도 안에서 미술을 통해 타자로서의 서구, 환경으로서의 한국, 그리고 주체로서의 자아라는 3가지 축을 통해 자신의 작품세계를 끊임없이 모색하고 변화시켜왔다. 빠르고도 밀도 높은 힘의 축들 사이에서, 한국의 특수성과 전통에의 정신이 가장 진솔한 결실들로 이어졌다.

<영원한 깜빡임>전의 18명 작가들은 모두 한국에서, 원숙함으로 미술적 업적을 높이 평가받고 있을 뿐 아니라, 세계적으로도 활발하게 활동하고 있다. 매체나 형식의 다양성도 눈에 띈다. 한국의 전통 수묵 채색화부터, 콩기름 안료를 쓴 회화, 사진과 뉴미디어 작품, 판화기법과 연기를 사용한 작업까지, 각각의 형식과 구성은 매우 흥미롭고도 지극히 개별적이다.

인간의 눈은 깜빡거리면서 외부의 침입으로부터 안구와 각막을 보호한다. 동시에 깜빡이면서 밖의 정보를 쉼없이 받아들인다. 마치 끊임없는 눈꺼풀의 열림과 닫힘처럼 능동적으로 사고와 예술적 영역을 넓혔던 작가들은, 그들의 경험처럼 힘차고 지속적으로 달려왔다. 한국이라는 특이한 장소성과 전통이 세계적의 예술 방향과 매체의 발달과 결부되면서 그들만이 향유할 수 있는 예술적 취향으로 발현되기에, 이번 전시는 21세기 한국 미술의 현장이자 정신을 보여준다고 하겠다.

Eternal Blinking: Contemporary art of Korea

WhuiYeon Jin (SungShin Women's University)

Korean art has less recognized throughout the world until the authoritarianism of military regimes began to be gradually replaced by both the democratic progress and the industrial development in the 1980s. Then, many Korean artists have fiercely tried to internationalize Korean authentic cultural tradition.

This exhibition introduces eighteen active contemporary artists in their either forties or fifties who have experienced historic dynamics, addressing the innermost conflicts and their own struggles in political, social, economic areas under the stimulant influx of global visual culture, as of 1980s.

Eye blinking makes eyes shed tears with removing irritants from the surface of the cornea and con-junctiva. And it also enables human to receive the information of outer world incessantly. As eye blinking works in human, Korean artists have actively developed their own talents and artistic sensitivities through the observation of the others formal and philosophical achievements. On the modernization and globalization, Korean contemporary art has been showing the most dynamic, energetic, flamboyant faucets in many culture fields.

These eighteen Korean artists will present the ever increasingly idiomatic versatile forms of art with maintaining a sense of place, tradition, and ethos.

※ 출처: 진휘연, 「영원한 깜빡임: 한국의 현대미술」, 『영원한 깜빡임: 한국의 현대미술』, 하와이대학교, 2010

Eternal Blinking

JeongMu Yang (Art Theory, Korea National University of Arts)

All of sudden, America becomes a right place to witness important contemporary Korean art. To enjoy all this, however, you should travel all the way to Huston or Hawaii. I presume you are not disappointed to hear that; in America, I heard, you are always ready to travel. The exhibition titled Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea is now held in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, after it premiered in LACMA, L.A., in June 2008. Soon after it ends in February 14, 2010, Eternal Blinking, the exhibition showing the contemporary works by 18 different Korean artists, opens at the University of Hawaii Art Gallery in Manoa.

These two exhibitions rather show the stand of unique dualism of contemporary Korean art in various senses. The exhibition in LACMA and Huston seems to focus on the international fluency of modern Korean art, whereas the works touring in Hawaii are more likely to be 'Koreanesque'. In terms of the dialogue between the West and the East, the Western accent is more prominent in Your Bright Future, meanwhile Oriental solemnity is well respected in Eternal Blinking. In fact, it is the works of a large-scale installation and multi- and mixed-media that capture our attention in Your Bright Future. By contrast, image-based two-dimensional pieces are in majority in Eternal Blinking. If you want to see the trendy international aspects of Korea, the exhibition Your Bright Future will fit you. However, if you think Korea is a country heavily challenging modernity on the basis of its strong national culture, Eternal Blinking is the answer.

In spite of much dualism, it seems to me that these two important exhibitions on Korean contemporary art, held consecutively in America, rightly share the one theme very clearly, i.e. the sense of dynamism; no doubt the most important aspect of modern Korean history. One can find it all in their selection of subject or in the application of material. There are always mixtures of uneasiness and contradictions in them. You may say that these are the bread and butter of modern art, but what is unique here is the sound they made. In both shows, you won't miss the big bang made by the head-on-clash of the conflict values such as individuality and society, local and global, traditional and western, which Korea have poignantly suffered the last thirty years.

It is of great interest to notice that there is still some difference in both exhibitions in their handling of the dynamics of Korean visual culture; in the exhibition Your Bright Future, it looks more humorous and bright, whereas in the coming Hawaiian show it seems more solemn and historical. As the former has been much talked about, I will discuss the latter more.

One of the fastest ways for the viewers of Eternal Blinking to be more involved in this show is to question how tradition meets modern especially in terms of artistic material and technique. In fact you can see that photographic artist BienU Bae use camera like oriental blush. His photographs look more like a traditional black-and-white ink painting, where it was illusive air, not form, which is more capturing. Dense foggy air is again prevailing in KiBong Rhee's painted landscape, but much engineered to encourage a deeper vision to mind. To a great extent, the Zen spirit is well presented in BohnChang Koo's all-over whitish vessel. This white ceramic is the artwork stolen during the Japanese Occupation and now it resides in the Japan Folk Crafts Museum, Tokyo. Koo wants to take it back to original context in forms of photograph.

Korean traditional paper is still a major support to GeunTaek Ryu, JongMee Jung, and HeeYeon Kwon. To Ryu, it serves as a field of representing everyday urban culture; Jung wants it to criticize plastic modern beauty; to Kwon, it is a nature for creating life.

Clement Greenburg's long-forgotten formalism is joyfully resurrected from NamSin Kwak's silhouette painting. Kwak always makes a sharp balance between the abstract and the real and 2-D flatness and 3-D illusion by looking into shadowy images. The subversion of modernism is also found in HwaJin Chang's work, where the modernist hierarchy of a painting and a frame is critically dismantled. He focuses on the frame, which is not only a frame but also framing a view toward the world of post-modern all over painting.

The 'monochrome painting', highly established in Korea in the seventies, is also reinterpreted in YongSik Kim's round-shape canvas painting. In reality, it is this monochromic tradition or pure coloristic abstract where most of the artists in the show were once involved from in their formative years. Some of them who obviously hate it were determined to return to the image. Images are floating over the color field in the works by Taiho Kim and SangBong Lee, showing how much a controlled sign leads to thousand words.

Images look brutal in YongSun Suh, but cynical in DongChun Yoon. Suh believes that to survive in harsh urban life, peoples' image alone should be strong and tougher. To Yoon, however, images in public sphere in Korea are nothing but the tangled slogan 'society of common sense'.

In past Korean history, art was regarded as the most important self-culture to elite literates. Art always went together with literature and calligraphy. The sense of literate's painting, i.e. the sense of moderate but solemn, is well found in WonGi Sul's pure abstract works. His poetic titles such as 'Early Fall' and 'Birch Trees on a Winter Night' go well with somber lines and colors.

Magic is the alter-ego of art in the age of digital era. In the moving photographic works of AiRan Kang and YoungSeok Yoon, much based on their massive-scale installations, give us some idea of how digital magic aesthetically works with representative art in Korea.

Split personal identity is an on-going subject to ChangKyum Kim. In his single channel video, titled 'Converse', two different pictures of oneself and the other continuously overlap, asking who's who to each other.

To DuckHyun Cho, searching personal identity is a task much severe to Korean woman. He presumes that a realistic portrait alone is not real enough in case of woman. He doubles the portrait and puts these into side by side. It looks that they are looking each other in a mirror, with the left and right sides reversed. We know the name of the sitter in his photography. She is called Nora, the first female fashion designer in Korea.

In conclusion, if you like this exhibition, then I may say that you will be the lover of 'elite' Korean art. In fact, the artists selected by Prof. WhuiYeon Jin, the momentary curator of KCAA(Korea College Association of Art), represent the upper tier of Korean modern art. They are in their late forties and fif-ties, and mostly spent some time in the West in their twenties or thirties. They are now well-established artists in Korea and some of them take university faculty positions. This exhibition demonstrates their artistic challenge as well as keen visual sensitivity.

※ 출처: JeongMu Yang, 「Eternal Blinking」, 『영원한 깜빡임: 한국의 현대미술』, 하와이대학교, 2010