Kukje Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in KIAF SEOUL 2021 from October 13 to 17, 2021. Running concurrently with Frieze, the upcoming edition of KIAF will take place in the Coex Convention & Exhibition Center (hereafter COEX) in Samseong-dong. Having launched in 2002, KIAF has consistently supported contemporary art in Korea, focusing on emerging talent and establishing a reputation as one of Asia’s leading international art fairs. Attracting major collectors, curators, and art professionals from not only Korea but around the world, the upcoming edition of KIAF will host more than 170 galleries from 12 countries including Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Complementing the physical fair will be its virtual counterpart titled KIAF SEOUL 2021 Online Viewing Rooms, a digital initiative first launched by the fair committee last year.
Kukje Gallery’s booth at KIAF will feature a broad range of works by both contemporary Korean and international artists. This selection will include important pieces by Korea’s leading modernists including Work (1961) by Yoo Youngkuk, one of the founders of Korean abstract painting and a contemporary of Kim Whanki , best known for his vibrant vocabularies that distilled Korean naturalism into formal elements of point, line, plane, and color; Lee Ufan’s From Line (1982), in which the artist makes a series of repetitive actions, drawing a single line over and over again until the pigment is exhausted in each stroke; and the Korean photographer Koo Bohnchang’s Gold (PE 034-1) (2016), which comes from his signature practice of journeying all over the world to locate and document different examples of gold artifacts. This particular work is also currently on view at Lingering in Time: Koo Bohnchang's Photography (1990-2021), a solo exhibition of the artist at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing which marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in China. The exhibition runs through November 14 and will travel to Xiamen in 2022. The booth will also showcase one of Haegue Yang’s ‘appliance sculptures’ titled Twelve Pyongchang-gil Heat_03 (2021), for which the gas stove has been modified to be wall-mounted, eliminating its original function, while a venetian blind hangs in front. Having successfully concluded her solo exhibition at Tate St Ives in September, Yang’s outdoor installation commission is on view through March 31, 2022, for the occasion of Expo 2020 Dubai, the first exposition to have launched in the Middle East.
These iconic works will be shown alongside those by critically acclaimed international artists including Julian Opie’s Ed and Marianela. 4. (2010), an earlier vinyl painting which employs Opie’s distinctively distilled formal language and black lines to outline the sinuous forms of the dancers’ bodies; and the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s blue yellow red mountain (2020), featuring three vertically stacked rocks painted in fluorescent colors. Inspired by naturally occurring geological formations and the meditative art of rock balancing, this is one of Rondinone’s most iconic series and has been reiterated in numerous public venues including the Nevada desert, The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, and Tate Liverpool.
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, KIAF has recently opened a special exhibition at Incheon International Airport Terminal 1, titled We Connect, Art & Future. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the airport. An ambitious initiative to introduce KIAF to travelers, the exhibition features 67 works by Korean and international artists presented by 20 galleries. Kukje Gallery has installed two new landscape paintings by the Korean contemporary artist Lee Kwang-Ho. Titled Untitled 2501 (2021) and Untitled 2366 (2020), these two works depict indigenous ecologies of Korea, including a wide variety of trees, vines, and grasses unique to the nation.
