Kukje Gallery will participate in Art Basel’s OVR: Portals, a new edition of online viewing rooms (hereafter OVR) announced by the fair organizers, from June 16 through June 19, 2021. One of Art Basel’s series of initiatives that provide online viewing environments designed to facilitate the very highest level of virtual visual art experience, OVR: Portals will feature 94 galleries from 29 countries and highlight “artistic practices that interrogate the parameters that have shaped our contemporary condition, both through current and historical lenses,” according to the fair’s statement. The upcoming OVR is curated by Magali Arriola, Director of Museo Tamayo in Mexico City; Christina Li, independent curator based in Amsterdam and Hong Kong; and Larry Ossei-Mensah, co-founder of ARTNOIR and Curator-at-Large at BAM in New York City.
For OVR: Portals, Kukje Gallery’s presentation will showcase a range of media including watercolor, sculpture, and embroidery by three critically acclaimed artists of today: Jenny Holzer, Kyungah Ham, and Suki Seokyeong Kang.
Highlights include a recent watercolor piece titled hacking and/or Assange (2020) by the American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, who has appropriated the US government’s “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election,” or more commonly known as the Mueller report. Thirty-six works from this new series in watercolor were first shown to Korean audiences in Holzer’s solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery last year. Shown alongside these powerful works is Holzer’s stonework titled Survival: It is in your self-interest… (2015), a white marble bench engraved with text. The tactile experience of tracing the letters cut in stone with one’s own hands provides an opportunity to reconsider the automated process of reading, opening doors to a conscious discernment and appreciation of emotion and comprehension. These celebrated works by Jenny Holzer will be exhibited alongside those by some of today’s most accomplished Korean contemporary artists, including What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities SSK 06-02 (2018) and Needling Whisper, Needle Country / SMS Series in Camouflage / Are you lonely too? C 01-01-03 (2016) by Kyungah Ham. Both works are from the artist’s series of meticulously hand-embroidered textile paintings created in collaboration with North Korean artisans that speak to a clandestine production process reflecting the tragic history of Korea’s division. Two of Ham’s large-scale embroidery paintings are currently on view in the group exhibition Border Crossings – North and South Korean Art from the Sigg Collection at the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, which features works from the prominent collection of the Swiss collector Uli Sigg. Also on view will be works by Suki Seokyeong Kang, whose work cultivates a unique artistic vocabulary that references and reinterprets various Korean traditions including craft, poetry, and dance. Featured works include Narrow Meadow #20-01 (2019-2020), a sculptural installation that was included in Kang’s acclaimed presentation for the 58th Venice Biennale titled May You Live in Interesting Times in 2019, and the iconic Mat 120 × 165 #20-08 (2020), a contemporary adaptation of a Korean floor mat called a hwamunseok, on which a traditional solo dance chunaengmu is performed.
Currently on view at Kukje Gallery Busan is The Other Side of Things, a solo exhibition of the Korean conceptual artist Ahn Kyuchul which will remain on view through July 4, 2021. The exhibition marks Ahn’s first encounter with local audiences in Busan and provides a comprehensive overview of his practice, introducing a range of his signature works. In Seoul, Kukje Gallery will open a solo exhibition of the Australian artist Daniel Boyd titled Treasure Island, slated to run from June 17 through August 1, 2021. Following his successful solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery Busan in 2019, this will be Boyd’s first show in Seoul and will present new works.
