Seou l

Kengo Nakamura, Usual Supper, 2010. Courtesy: Megumi Ogita Gallery, Tokyo and KIAF, Seoul

KIAF, the Gwangju Biennaleand Media City SeoulArt Report from South Korea

By Andy St. Louis

It has been said that Korea is the most Confuciannation in Asia. This manifests itself in all aspects ofKorean life—at the convenience store, on the bus, inromance and dating, at the bar—especially withstrangers. The basis of Confucian doctrine is the FiveRelationships, which essentially dictate the appropri-ate way to act in five specific relationships and are ex-trapolated to cover all the possible relationships insociety. That these social relationships are so con-cretely prescribed is arresting to a Western sensibility,all the more so since our relationships with other“strangers”—contemporary art, for example—arewholly left up to the discretion of the individual.

Fall is the international art season in South Korea,which plays host to several major art exhibitionsthis year: the Korea International Art Fair (KIAF),Gwangju Biennale, the Seoul International Bien-nale of Media Art (Media City Seoul), and theBusan Biennale. These exhibition programs sup-port the nation’s ambitious campaign to keeppace with other East Asian countries in terms ofcultural offerings. If 2010 is any indication, SouthKorea is not only keeping pace, but in some in-stances setting it. It is not mere chance that neigh-boring China’s highly regarded Shanghai AsiaPacific Contemporary Art Fair (ShContemporary)changed its exhibition dates this year to matchthose of the Korea International Art Fair (KIAF).

Taking place on Seoul’s equivaliant of New York’sFifth Avenue, a decidedly upscale KIAF 2010drew some 70,000 visitors to see art works pre-sented by 193 gal ler ies f rom 16 countr ies.Organized by the Galleries Association of Korea,this 9th edition of the fair proved to be the mostrepresentative among international art fairsseeking to woo collectors in today’s/tomorrow’sAsia. Whi le other international ar t fairs herehave quietly embraced regionalism—Shanghai’sShContemporary art fair re-branded itself as theAsia Pacific Art Fair, downplaying its internationalorigins—the KIAF has let it be known that thewhole world is welcome in Seoul.

14 thenewyorkar twor ld .com 15thenewyorkar twor ld .com

“Despite the Confucian influences that pervade somany aspects of daily life in this country,contemporary art is granted a rulebook all its own;and it’s a blank canvas”

Overview of KIAF (Korea International Art Fair), Seoul 2010. Photo: Macinnis

16 thenewyorkar twor ld .com 17thenewyorkar twor ld .com

As if to underscore this point, the UK, a countrythat is a leader in contemporary art, was chosenas the guest country for this year’s KIAF. Leadingfigures in the British contemporary art scene wereinvited to discuss present and future of British art,as well as the relationship between art fairs andbiennales. These included Hans Ulrich Obrist, atthe Serpentine Gallery, Frances Morris, Head ofCollections at Tate Modern, and Daniel Birnbaum,Director of the (2009 Venice Biennale and cur-rently at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. KIAFalso included several programs that expand onthe traditional role of an art fair, such as the ArtistSupport Program, to support promising new artistsfor the development of the art market, and theDocent Program and KIDS in KIAF, which help visitorsof all ages to better understand modern art. Thefair was very well attended, with an upbeat en-ergy through to the last day when reports of lastminute sales by several top Korean galleries fur-ther buoyed spirits.

To be sure, it is of no small significance that SouthKorea is an open society in a part of the worldwhere authoritarian regimes—albeit dressed insparkling consumer facades—mostly have the lastword. That makes a difference. Journalists don’thave to explain themselves to the authorities orapply for special visas to travel here, exhibitorsare not told to fill out government censorship formsfor approval of the artwork they show. You canGoogle anything you want to know on the inter-net, use the social network of your choice, sendemail without fear of unforseen consequences foryou or the recipient. Moreover, Nobel Peace Prizelaureates are not put in jail here. All of this makes

Seou l

18 thenewyorkar twor ld .com 19thenewyorkar twor ld .com

“To be sure, it is of no small significance thatSouth Korea is an open society in a part of theworld where authoritarian regimes—albeitdressed in sparkling consumer facades—mostlyhave the last word”

Kim Joon, bird land-bently, 2008. Digital print, 100 x 175 cm. Courtesy: Art Link Gallery, Seoul and KIAF, Seoul

20 thenewyorkar twor ld .com 21thenewyorkar twor ld .com

South Korea especially fertile ground in the AsiaPacific realm for making, showing and collecting arton an international level.

Despite the Confucian influences that pervade somany aspects of daily life in this country, contem-porary art is granted a rulebook all its own; andit’s a blank canvas. The city of Gwangju (pop.1.4 million) hardly seems befitting of its enviableposition as the locus for the Korean Peninsula’smost prestigious (and Asia’s oldest) art bienniale.The Gwangju Biennale, begun in 1995 as a trib-ute to the city’s bloody 1980 political uprising—the Gwangju Massacre—is a telling example ofKorea’s ongoing efforts to become the region’sforemost cultural hub. This year’s exhibition takesthe title 10,000 Lives in homage to the 30-volumeepic poem written during the author Ko Un’s incar-ceration for his participation in the South Koreandemocracy movement, which played the tragicrole in the city’s eponymous uprising. In the poem,Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives), the author attemptsto record portraits of every person he had evermet—some 4,000 in total—during his four-yearterm of solitary confinement. The exhibition, whichgathers works by 134 artists from more than 30countries, explores different approaches to image-making since the turn of the 20th century and thecultural ramifications of our society’s obsessionwith and dependency upon images.

Seou l

(opposite page) Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Thousand, 2009. 1000 Polaroids mounted on aluminum. Courtesy: David Zwirner, New Yorkand Gwangju Biennial 2010. (above) Street scene in Seoul during KIAF (Korea International Art Fair), 2010. Photo: Macinnis

The Gwangju Biennale is masterfully executed,from an exhibition-design perspective. ArtisticDirector Massimiliano Gioni abandons the con-ventional region-based organization of ar tists(a practice that in years past had displaced thebiennale’s Korean contingent to languish in a sec-ondary venue) and substituted it with a thematicone. The result is by all accounts a success: by sub-dividing the show into seven distinct sections, Gionicounters the tendency towards Whitakerian “museumlegs” endemic to exhibitions of this magnitude.This t r an s i t i o n f r om t he cu s t oms - o f f i c e t ot he Kunstkammer as its exhibition model cultivatesthe atmosphere of a temporary museum rather thana traditional biennale. Indeed, Gioni—whosecuratorial belt also bears notches from theBerlin Biennale (2006), Manifesta 5 (2004), aswell as the New Museum and the FondazioneNicola Trussardi (both currently)—has bravely gonewhere few biennial curators seem to be goingthese days: namely, curating. In providing such crit-ical contextualization for each section of the show,Gioni ensures that his vision for the exhibition iscoherent and decipherable to all audiences andlays a didactic framework within which viewerscan actively engage with artworks instead of strug-gling with an otherwise oblique exhibition concept.

The drawings on paper by Guo Fengyi fit neatly, ifunexpectedly, into Gioni’s section of works that

“Some 160 miles to the north, in the country’scapital city Seoul, another important biennialexplores the dialogue between mass media andthe human experience in 21st-century society”

City view of Seoul, seen from COEX InterContinental Hotel, during KIAF (Korea International Art Fair), 2010. Photo: Macinnis

thenewyorkar twor ld .com22 thenewyorkar twor ld .com 23

24 thenewyorkar twor ld .com 25thenewyorkar twor ld .com

Seou l

Alice Kok, Family Script, 2008. Three-channel video,18:05. Courtesy: Gwangju Biennial 2010.

explores the mechanics of vision through optical il-lusions and “para-scientific imaginaries.” Her an-thropomorphic and surrealistic depictions of visionsexperienced as an outpouring of her practice ofQigong—a pseudoscientific alternative medicinepractice, based in mental training and energyflow—are at once self-referential and altogether re-moved. The images, she claims, derive from meta-physical circumstances, finding expression onpaper with the self as a conduit rather than asource. Concepts of cognition, content, and formare wholly out of the picture for Guo, whose sen-suous line and abstracted volumes are a means ofphysical and mental healing rather than consciouscreation.

The process of healing through images resonateswith Alice Kok’s poignant video work Family Script(2008), which activates relationships to images inan engrossing fashion by locating itself at the in-tersection of image and memory. For the piece,Kok shuttles messages between family members oneither side of the India-Tibet border. Though themessages range from banal to poetic to matter-of-fact, it is the images that carry the emotional weightin this piece. Although the physical unity of thesefamilies has been destroyed, their sense of familyis intact, and in fact is only strengthened throughtheir ability to “talk” to one another via a cam-corder. The image as a proxy for the self and theattachment to such representations when the realthing is unattainable imbue this piece with an im-mediacy and weight that is augmented by Korea’sown geopolitical partition. Kok’s work is certainlyone of the most touching and intimate in thissprawling exhibition, and it offers viewers a much-appreciated escape from the isolation of thegallery to the familiar, if gut-wrenching, sense oflonging we all share.

Issues of documentation and the projected imageof oneself in absentia also pervade the photo-graphic work of Tehching Hseih and Tong Binqxue.Hseih’s Punching the Time Clock in the Hour, OneYear Performance, April 11, 1980 - April 11,1981 (1980-81) explores the macro-archival(read: obsessive-compulsive) process of photo-graphing the artist every hour of every day for ayear. Seen as an effort to verify the artist’s existenceduring his yearlong absence from public life,Hseih’s piece approaches the encyclopedic volumeof Ko Un’s epic poem. Both serve as archives of

sorts, preserving for posterity’s sake the lives ofindividuals. Tong Binqxue’s album of found photo-graphs of Ye Jinglu adopts a similar documentaryimpulse, though perhaps a more narcissistic one.The album includes 62 portraits of a Chinese busi-nessman, reflecting the sitter’s changes in physicalappearance in annual increments. While Hseihexamines a “year in the life,” Ye’s photo albumshows life itself, reflecting a commitment to Foucault’srendering of the archive as a synecdoche for timeitself. Both works, however, direct our own gazeinward, forcing viewers to consider the slipperyfleetingness of time and the perilously dichotomousemptiness/permanence of images.

These archival tendencies, so much a trend in typ-ical “biennial art,” take up residence throughoutthe Gwangju Biennale.Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Thou-sand (2009), one thousand polaroids drawn fromthe artist’s existing oeuvre and presented in linearform, is topped only by Ydessa Hendeles’s Partners(The Teddy Bear Project) (2002) in terms of sheerarchival magnitude. Having compiled over 3,000photographs, ca. 1900-1940, of people withteddy bears, the Canadian curator and collectorpresents them in a massive floor-to-ceiling immer-sive installation executed salon-style, complete withvitrines full of antique teddy bears and other sun-dries. One thousand polaroids, 3,000 teddybears, 10,000 lives; Gioni’s close examination ofour contemporary obsession with images is astrong showing, an archive of the greatest merit.

Some 160 miles to the north, in the country’s cap-ital city Seoul, another important biennial exploresthe dialogue between mass media and the humanexperience in 21st-century society. Media CitySeoul (also called the 6th Seoul International

“Of course, the age of Photoshop has jaded usall to the de facto legitimacy of the old adagethe camera never lies”

Noh Suntag, the strAnge ball, 2004-2007. Pigment print, 80 x 110 cm. Courtesy: Media City Seoul 2010.

thenewyorkar twor ld .com 27thenewyorkar twor ld .com26

Seou l

Media Art Biennale) presents 46 artists (10 ofwhich hail from Korea) in an impressive and en-gaging platform for reflection on society’s increas-ing dependence upon a variety of media outlets.Under the title of Trust, artistic director SunjungKim facilitates new interpretations of the term“media art” in an effort to go beyond the stricturesof a “media art biennale.” Trust, it turns out, seemsto be an apt title, especially given its irritatinglynondescript nature; our reevaluation of media artas the basis for artistic practice comes underscrutiny along with our response to the mass mediaand the universal yet enigmatic concept of trust itself.

In simpler times, trust in the media was fosteredthrough the frankness and simplicity of photogra-phy. Of course, the age of Photoshop has jadedus all to the de facto legitimacy of the old adage“the camera never lies,” yet two artists in MediaCity Seoul—Miki Kratsman and Noh Suntag—make excellent use of still photography to revealour society’s growing tendency toward skepticismin the media. Miki Kratsman’s Targeted Killing(2010) investigates the ways in which perceptionsof photographic veracity are manipulated when im-ages bear the endorsement of government agen-cies. By retrofitting a specialty lens (normally usedin unmanned, remote-piloted aircraft used by theIsrael Defense Forces to assassinate anti-Israeli tar-gets) to his camera, the artist recreates images ofsuch targets (individuals on the ground unawarethey are being targeted) just moments before theirdeaths. Kratsman’s treatment of these types of im-ages—in this case images disseminated by theIsraeli Defense Forces via the media to the Israelipublic—assumes added gravitas when it is madeknown that the photographer’s “targets” arePalestinian refugees who presumably never knewwhat hit them.

“By embracing the ‘city’ aspect of its title, MediaCity Seoul 2010 edges closer to its originalgoal of curating a city-wide biennale”

thenewyorkar twor ld .com 29thenewyorkar twor ld .com28

Official intelligence images is the jumping-off pointfor Noh Suntag’s stunning black-and-white photoseries the strAnge ball (2004-2007). In this work,the artist, whose themes deal with the prickly polit-ical relations between North and South Korea,investigates the identity of a large spherical struc-ture installed in a field on South Korea’s west coast.After a diligent inquiry into the nature and purposeof the “strange ball,” of which even local residentswere unaware, he discovered it to be a high-pow-ered radar device operated by the U.S. military.His photographs frame the surveillance machine inways that betray the gravity of its military nature,creating picturesque, even cinematic, images thatprovide a platform for reflection.

Sarah Morris’s brilliant video work, which wasfilmed during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games inBeijing, provides a representation of the city thattakes in the full measure of the communist Chinesecapital beyond the “Bird’s Nest” and “WaterCube.” In Beijing (2008), Morris presents the kindof media coverage that she would like to see for anevent such as the Olympics—along with triumphantimages of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, and theother protagonists of the Games themselves, wealso see mundane scenes from the lives of the city’s22 million inhabitants. Perhaps not surprisingly,these are the images that are most captivating,invoking our own memories of the 2008 OlympicGames, reminding us that media coverage at

Seou l

“Having compiled over 3,000 photographs, ca.1900-1940, of people with teddy bears, theCanadian curator and collector presents them ina massive floor-to-ceiling immersive installationexecuted salon-style, complete with vitrines full ofantique teddy bears and other sundries”

Ydessa Hendeles Partners (The Teddy Bear Project), 2002. Courtesy: Gwangju Biennale, Seoul

thenewyorkar twor ld .com30 thenewyorkar twor ld .com 31

Seou l

Sunjung Kim, this year’s director, is the latest in aline of Korean directors, who was aided by ClaraKim of RECAT Los Angeles, Nicolaus Schafhausenof Witte de With Center Rotterdam and SumitomoFumihiko of the Museum of Contemporary ArtTokyo. Media City Seoul, directed by Seoul-basedindependent curator Sunjung Kim incorporated atotal of four venues, including the original 1913building of a historically important girl’s highschool. By embracing the “city” aspect of its title,Media City Seoul 2010 edges closer to its originalgoal of curating a city-wide biennale. Spreadingwork across four venues (though the majority is in-stalled in the central Seoul Museum of Art) allowedfor audiences to let things marinate (or perhapsstew, depending on one’s mood), something thatis crucial when visiting an exhibition that is over50% video-based.

Altogether, the Korea International Art Fair, (KIAF),the Busan Biennale, the Gwangju Biennale andMedia City Seoul build upon the legacies begunwhen the art scene in Korea was still in its adoles-cence. The year 2010 brings perhaps the strongestshowings any of these projects has ever seen,doing justice to what Tobias Berger, formerly of theNam June Paik Art Center, has called “probablythe most sophisticated art scene in Asia.” WhileKIAF finished last month, the biennial exhibitionsrun until early November. These shows are a must-seefor anyone interested in what the years ahead willbring. One need only look to the runaway successof the 2009 LACMA/MFAH exhibition “Your BrightFuture: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea” (alsocurated by Media City Seoul’s Sunjung Kim) to seewhere the Korean art scene is headed.

To crib from an old Confucian saying: “Successdepends upon previous preparation, and withoutsuch preparation there is sure to be failure.” If theKIAF, Busan Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, andMedia City Seoul are any indication, the prepara-tion is well underway in the Land of the MorningCalm: indications of a bright future indeed. M

mega-events such as the Beijing Olympics is highlyselective, raising questions about the public rela-tions agendas in play not only by media outlets,but the Chinese government itself.

In one of the most perplexing but visually alluringworks in the show, Korean media artist Yangachi(whose name translates as “gangster” in English)presents his two-channel installation Bright DoveHyunsook Gyeongseong (2010). The video fol-lows “Miss Hyunsook” through the streets androoftops of historic Seoul (Gyeongseong was thename of the Korean capital during Japanese colo-nial t imes). In the work, the subject, wearinga helmet/perch for a taxodermic pigeon, wanderswordlessly in a world “as experienced throughother worlds—those of spirits, birds, ever-changingperspectives,” creating an unsettling but curi-ously enthralling experience for viewers. All this isunderscored by the hypnotic ambience of a free-formBeat Generation jazz soundtrack. The artist’sCCTV-esque cinematographic approach (continuallyreorienting the camera angle) subversively ques-tions the nature of observation and surveillance, en-snaring viewers in a voyeuristic enchantment;following the protagonist—at times dancing, othertimes pensive, always exuding a sense of funda-mental indecision—we become aware of the waysin which human imperfections come to be exploitedby the media.

Street scene in Seoul durng KIAF (Korea International Art Fair), 2010. Photo: Macinnis