The Kyoto-based Korean artist KWAK Duck-Jun (b.1937) has earned international renown through his works that challenged the absoluteness of established notions. Engaging in a wide range of experiments in the 1960s with tableau, photography, installation, video and more, the artist, since the 1970s, moved onto consistently questioning the relationship between individual and society; reality and awareness; and images from the media and individual perception.

The exhibition title, TIMELESS, represents the artist’s unresolved query on double identity and his unending struggle from birth to present. The exhibition space has been organized so to offer a glimpse into the insecure identity of Kwak, who has been a constant outsider in both Korea and Japan, along with his journey in overcoming the trial. Across all of his works, he contextualizes a permanent union of fragmented phenomena; the exhibition will illuminate his artistic perspective and, through the conveyance of his humor and irony, provide an opportunity for the viewer to discover meaning within the artist’s cry of meaninglessness.

KWAK Duck-Jun was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1937. He studied Japanese painting at Kyoto Hiyoshigaoka Art High School. After the Second World War, his Japanese nationality was nullified as an effect of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951; he has, however, remained in Kyoto to continue his artistic activities. In 2003, he made his name in Korea through the exhibition Artist of the Year, organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea, and received wide acclaim in the art world with his large-scale exhibition, which opened at the National Museum of Art, Osaka in 2014. His works are held by many respected art museums, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and Fukuoka Prefectural Museum of Art.