Kukje Gallery will participate in ART BUSAN at the BEXCO Exhibition Center from May 14 through May 16, 2021. In recent years, Busan has become a thriving cultural hub, its local arts scene energized by newly opened museums, galleries, and multicultural complexes. Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, ART BUSAN has established itself as one of the city's most iconic arts and culture events alongside the Busan International Film Festival and Busan Biennale. The upcoming iteration will feature 110 exhibitors from Korea and abroad participating in the Main Galleries and Impressions (S-booth) sections, the latter of which introduces solo presentations of young and emerging artists under the age of 45. Also on view will be a variety of special exhibitions and programs including a group exhibition introducing works by ten young Korean painters, as well as a series of conversations featuring art professionals exploring the latest trends in the art market and an online viewing room.
Kukje Gallery will showcase celebrated works by a roster of leading modern and contemporary Korean and international artists. Highlights include Work (1978) by Yoo Youngkuk, an artist celebrated for his role in promoting abstract art in postwar Korea along with his peer Kim Whanki, having created a vibrant vocabulary that distills Korean naturalism into basic formal elements of point, line, plane, and color; Thinner…and Thinner…#16-84 (2016) from the iconic series of “dot paintings” by Kim Yong-Ik, an artist who has maintained an independent stance amidst Korea’s dominant artistic movements; as well as recent works by Kibong Rhee including Bottom of Silence (2020), in which a veil of translucent fabric evokes the moonlit haze and a shift within the artist’s psyche towards the end of the day. Also on view at Kukje Gallery’s booth will be the contemporary artist Haegue Yang's Sonic Rotating Identical Circular Triplets – Copper and Silver #9 (2021), a new wall sculpture featuring three identical circular frames covered with stainless steel and copper plated bells that generate unique visual patterns and acoustics that evoke a multisensory experience when manually rotated; along with Jina Park’s Lighting Above 01 (2018), a figurative oil painting that captures a stage crew installing lighting equipment for a live performance. Jina Park is a painter who is inspired by casual snapshots of everyday spaces including exhibition installation sites in galleries or museums, airports, and nighttime scenery. Her compositions maintain the perspective of an observer who is alienated from his or her surroundings, while at the same time providing a platform to ponder otherwise unnoticed or forgotten moments. The introduction of Park’s work to local audiences in Busan serves as a precursor to the artist’s upcoming solo exhibition with Kukje Gallery in its Busan space this coming August.
Works by modern and contemporary Korean artists will be shown in tandem with those by leading international artists, including Blue 32 (2020) from the ongoing series of Redaction Paintings by the American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, who has appropriated declassified but often heavily redacted U.S. government documents released by the Freedom of Information Act; and the Australian artist Daniel Boyd’s Untitled (KSCUDC) (2020), whose work confronts established perspectives of Australian colonial history by using clear dots of glue to cover the surface of the painting, where they act as “lenses,” shifting our worldview.
To coincide with ART BUSAN’s VIP and Press Preview on May 13, 2021, Kukje Gallery will open The Other Side of Things, a solo exhibition of the conceptual artist Ahn Kyuchul in the gallery’s Busan space. Ahn’s second solo show with Kukje Gallery is also his first ever in Busan, providing a survey of the artist’s broad practice as well as introducing a new chapter of his career following retirement from his long tenure at the School of Visual Arts, Korea National University of Arts. The exhibition will remain on view through July 4, 2021.
In Seoul, Kukje Gallery is preparing a solo exhibition of the Australian artist Daniel Boyd, 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.
