Kukje Gallery is very pleased to announce its participation in the inaugural edition of ENTER Art Fair in Copenhagen, Denmark. ENTER Art Fair will be held in the historic region of Refshaleøen, a former industrial island located in the northeastern docklands of this seafaring city, from August 29 to September 1, 2019. Taking place in a 3,000m2 tent, the inaugural edition of the fair will feature 29 galleries from 16 cities in 12 countries across 3 continents. Kukje Gallery is the sole participating gallery from not only Korea, but all of Asia. The gallery will feature modern and contemporary works by leading Korean and international artists. In celebration of the 60th Anniversary of official Korea-Denmark Diplomatic Relations occurring this year, Kukje Gallery’s participation in ENTER Art Fair is both an opportunity to showcase the gallery’s art programming and acknowledge the incredibly important history of cultural exchange and respect that exists between the two nations.
The city of Copenhagen has seen a surge of interest in contemporary art in recent years, and numerous influential institutions and art fairs, including Copenhagen Contemporary and Code Art Fair, have highlighted the energy of this great city. Refshaleøen, once a heavily industrial area that housed one of Europe’s largest shipbuilding facilities, has been transformed into an emerging cultural district of Copenhagen that offers a selection of Danish fine dining options and delicious street food, where local businesses focus on creative and sustainable design, as well as cutting edge contemporary art.
ENTER Art Fair is the first and only art fair to combine the physical experience of a fair with a virtual one, creating a major online platform powered by Artland. This vision is grounded in ENTER Art Fair being a collaboration between the team that launched Code Art Fair, Scandinavia’s first international art fair, and Artland, a Danish mobile application and social networking platform that allows users to explore exhibitions in 3D virtual reality. While the physical art fair will take place over four days, the virtual feature, complete with tours of the fair booths, will remain online for a year, providing an in-depth experience more characteristic of an exhibition. The fair will also feature an artistic program titled An Endless ‘Present’ curated by the independent curator and researcher Irene Campolmi, along with a special section ENTER.VR focusing on art produced in virtual reality and other digital mediums.
To mark its participation in this innovative fair, the Kukje Gallery booth will showcase celebrated works by leading modern and contemporary Korean artists. The display will include historic and recent works by Dansaekhwa masters including Park Seo-Bo’s Ecriture (描法) No. 171125 (2017) from the artist’s iconic Ecriture series and Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 18-53 (2018), which utilizes the innovative method known as bae-ap-bub. Park Seo-Bo is the subject of a major retrospective titled Park Seo Bo: The Untiring Endeavorer currently on view at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, through September 1, while Ha Chong-Hyun is featured in an eponymously titled solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery’s Busan branch through August 4. Also on view alongside these Korean master works will be Kyungah Ham’s meticulously hand-embroidered textile paintings including What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities SK 04-02 (2017-2018), created in collaboration with North Korean artisans and depicting the relationship and ideology of South and North Korea. Ham recently opened her second solo exhibition at the European gallery carlier | gebauer in their newly opened Madrid outpost, and is currently participating in the group show titled 52 ARTISTS 52 ACTIONS at Artspace in Sydney.
In celebration of the 60th Anniversary of Korea-Denmark Diplomatic Relations, Kukje Gallery’s booth will also highlight its commitment to showcasing critically acclaimed Scandinavian artists. On view will be Highway Painting, No. 6 (2019) by the Berlin-based, Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset. A new work that was first shown in the artists’ solo exhibition with Kukje Gallery Seoul in March, this sculptural painting uses rectangular pieces of asphalt as a ground and paint that is normally used for painting road markings. Formally reminiscent of Minimalist geometric abstractions, the signs on the asphalt painting refer to a shared urban language that is subverted and turned into signifiers that point to both the familiar and the subconscious, blurring the division between the public and private.
Kukje Gallery is also very pleased to announce representation of the Danish art collective SUPERFLEX. SUPERFLEX was founded in 1993 by Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, Jakob Fenger, and Rasmus Nielsen, and is widely regarded for their diverse practice incorporating public art installations, architectural projects, paintings, sculptures, film, and participatory works that challenge the role of the artist in contemporary society and explore the nature of globalization and systems of power. For the installation at the fair, Kukje Gallery will showcase the trio’s Après Vous, Le Déluge / Year 2301, 6.8 meter (2019), a long horizontal, blue glass sculptural installation that resembles a dashed line. This line was initially conceived as a site-specific work for the new building of the Galeries Lafayette in Champs Elysées, Paris, where it marks the estimated height of sea level rise within the next century as a consequence of climate change; the height of the predicated water marked by the line is based on the 2015 Paris Agreement from the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
To celebrate its new collaboration with SUPERFLEX, Kukje Gallery has opened a solo exhibition titled In our dreams we have a plan with the trio opening on August 14 in its Busan branch. This follows the successful debut of the artists’ iconic public art project titled One Two Three Swing! at the Dora Observatory in Paju, Korea.
At its Seoul location, Kukje Gallery is proud to announce its first solo exhibition with the internationally renowned Korean contemporary artist Haegue Yang on September 3. Titled When The Year 2000 Comes, this will be the artist’s first show in Korea since her solo exhibition at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, in 2015.
