Seoul braces for big art names
Anish Kapoor and Olafur Eliasson will exhibit works in South Korea this year
Museum and galleries in Seoul are getting ready to excite art-lovers with an impressive line-up this year.
Some of the most anticipated names include Korean masters Lee Jung-seob, Yoo Young-guk, Chung Chang-sub and Nam June Paik, while Anish Kapoor and Olafur Eliasson are among the foreigners to be featured.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of two giants of Korean art – Lee Jung-seob and Yoo Young-guk. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art will hold extensive exhibitions featuring the masters’ works at its Deoksugung Palace branch museum.
The event opens with a solo exhibition of work by Lee (1916-56), best known for his painting of a fighting bull. The exhibition from June 1 to September 25 is expected to be the most comprehensive retrospective of Lee’s work. Gathering so much of it in one place has been a challenge since most of his paintings are privately owned, but the show will offer a broad overview of his philosophy and life.
Yoo Young-guk (1916-2002), one of the first-generation abstract artists in Korea, will be under the spotlight at the Museum’s Deoksugung branch from October 14 to February 5, 2017. Some 120 abstract paintings, 20 sketches and works in other media will be on view, offering insight into the artist’s experiments throughout his career to create geometric abstract images.
Following a series of successful solo shows in 2015 of dansaekhwa – Korean monochrome art – the Kukje Gallery is presenting another, this one featuring Chung Chang-sup (1927-2011) and running from February 26 to March 27.
Chung is known for his “unpainted paintings”, made with Korean dak (mulberry) paper soaked in water and then moulded onto a flat canvas. Chung sought to explore Taoist beliefs, balancing materials and nature.
Gallery Hyundai marks the 10th anniversary of the death of media-art pioneer Nam June Paik (1932-2006) with an exhibition showcasing 40 of his works, including objects and records from his shamanic performance in the backyard of the gallery in 1990.
“Nam June Paik: When He was in Seoul” will open on January 28, the anniversary of the eve of his death a decade ago. The Seoul Museum of Art will exhibit its collection of Nam works in June.
Indian-British sculptor Anish Kapoor, famous for immense sculptures, will have a solo exhibition in the latter half of this year at the Kukje Gallery, which hosted shows by him in 2003 and 2008. Kapoor is expected to bring new sculptures.
He’s best known for his gigantic “Cloud Gate” in Chicago and “Orbit Tower”, made for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Kapoor’s works were also shown in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles outside Paris last year, following an exhibition of Korean monochrome artist Lee U-fan.
The Leeum Samsung Museum of Art will present the first solo exhibition in South Korea of Danish artist Olafur Eliasson in October.
Eliasson, known for his large installations incorporating natural elements such as sunlight, water and air, was introduced to local audiences with his installation “Gravity Stairs” at the museum, which featured mirrors and LED tubes arranged according to the order of the planets in the solar system.
