Kukje Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the 2021 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach at the Miami Beach Convention Center from December 2 to 4, 2021. Art Basel’s Miami Beach edition returns after cancelling its previous edition in face of the worldwide pandemic last year, and is the last Art Basel to reopen its doors after the successful rebound of both Basel and Hong Kong editions earlier this year. Maintaining their successful hybrid format integrating both physical and virtual platforms, the upcoming iteration of Art Basel Miami Beach will also offer both in-person and online experiences via Online Viewing Rooms.
The 2021 edition will feature 253 top-tier international galleries from 36 countries from continents including Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa, participating in different sectors including Galleries, the fair’s main sector; Kabinett, introducing curated exhibitions based on an art-historical approach; Meridians, curated by Magalí Arriola, the Director of Museo Tamayo, and featuring sixteen ambitious and monumental presentations pushing the boundaries of a traditional art fair layout; the remaining sectors include Positions, Nova, Survey, and Edition.
For the Galleries sector, Kukje Gallery will showcase paintings, sculpture, photographs, and installations by both Korean and international modern and contemporary artists. The booth will highlight important pieces by foremost Korean contemporary artists including one of Haegue Yang’s ‘appliance sculptures’ titled Twelve Pyongchang-gil Heat – #2 HS22550 (2021), for which the gas stove has been modified to be wall-mounted, eliminating its original function, while a venetian blind hangs in front. Yang’s work is currently exhibited at Expo 2020 Dubai, the first exposition to have launched in the Middle East, where she has a large-scale outdoor commission on view through March 31, 2022. Also on display at Kukje Gallery’s booth will be Gimhongsok’s MATERIAL (2014) from a series of sculptures comprised of inflated balloons cast in bronze and stacked on top of each other to form a column. Varying in size, the red balloons are blown up by the artist’s friends and acquaintances before being cast, a process that signals a symbolic transformation of their breath into a tangible object. The booth will also showcase works such as Kibong Rhee’s Eye and blackhole (2014), a dreamlike landscape created using layers of plexiglass and canvas to create an optically engrossing pictorial environment consisting of water, fog, and trees; and Suki Seokyeong Kang’s sculpture GRANDMOTHER TOWER — tow #19-06 (2015-2019), a movable variation of the artist’s oldest ongoing series titled Grandmother Tower which honors and references her grandmother’s body, powerfully embodying the dynamic upheavals of Korean modern society from colonial to postcolonial times.
These works by important Korean artists will be shown alongside those by acknowledged international masters including the iconic American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s silver gelatin print Ken Moody (1984), a photograph from the artist’s series of black nudes from the 1980s; the Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset’s The Other He (2018), a smaller version of the artists’ permanent installation Han (2012) installed on the waterfront in front of the Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, Denmark. A masculine interpretation of Edvard Eriksen’s The Little Mermaid (unveiled in 1913), The Other He challenges the “heroic” depictions of men in commemorative sculptural traditions and initiates dialogue around difference in gender identity. In October, Elmgreen & Dragset were awarded the 14th Robert Jacobsen Prize by the Würth Foundation in Künzelsau, Germany, in praise for “[t]heir multifaceted work [which] oscillates between seriousness and absurdity,” and which “show[s] a high social relevance and extreme urgency." The booth will also introduce the Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX’s The Show Must Go On (2019), a common colloquial phrase recreated as a LED sign reminiscent of a billboard that transforms the nature of commercial signage and invokes reflections on the meaning and reach of cliché in popular culture.
In addition to the Galleries sector, Kukje Gallery will also showcase SUPERFLEX for the Kabinett sector of the fair. Kukje Gallery’s presentation will include a single installation from the artists titled Dive-In (2021), a smaller version of a colossal architectural structure originally commissioned by Desert X in collaboration with TBA21-Academy, a transdisciplinary organization that integrates art into addressing pressing social and environmental issues, and installed in the Coachella Valley in 2019 on the occasion of the biennial. Dive-In consists of bubblegum pink, porous blocks of aluminum foam, reminiscent of coral. Projected onto the façade of this installation is a video recording of the same structure—this time installed underwater—with fish playfully interacting with the prototype. Dive-In invites viewers to contemplate the consequences of climate change and a new era of submersion, effectively presenting a crossroads between the present and a potentially subaquatic future within the context of the coastal resort city of Miami Beach. In September, SUPERFLEX received the Danish Crown Prince Couple's Cultural Award 2021, in recognition for their utilization of art as “tools” to discover inspiring solutions to some of today’s greatest challenges including sustainability and environment. Works by SUPERFLEX are also currently on view at numerous institutional solo and group exhibitions around the globe, including Kunsthaus Graz, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, and BLOX in Copenhagen.
Currently on view at Kukje Gallery’s Seoul location is a solo exhibition of Julian Opie. Spanning the gallery’s K2 and K3 spaces, as well as the garden, this exhibition introduces 31 statues and paintings depicting a mix of buildings, people, and animals, and will remain on view through November 28, 2021. Meanwhile at Kukje Gallery Busan, the first-ever solo exhibition of the film director Park Chan-wook, titled Your Faces, is on exhibit. The most recent addition to the gallery’s roster of artists, Park’s show consists of a carefully curated group of 30 photographs. The show will remain on view through December 19, 2021.
