The first of the two exhibitions, I have no idea, because I have no idea., is comprised of installations and video art that appropriate memes, which oversaturate the internet, in an art historical narrative. Moving images and GIFs, even as short as 20 odd seconds, instantaneously capture the emotions and thoughts of a fleeting moment by referencing various modes of online communication. Through his body of work, Insane Park highlights the positioning of memes as a social trend through exponential reproduction and distribution, often taken out of context. This process guides the audience to challenge the tolerance of today’s vapid societal structure, which encourages industries, founded upon material desires of individuals, to spread and flourish through the channel of mass media.

 

By parodying the widely popular TV program of the same title, Joy of Painting-the second of the two exhibitions-humorously satirizes the value of art determined by the art world system. Insane Park collages scenes from the program in order to fabricate an episode in which Bob Ross, American painter and original host of the show, gives an “easy-to-follow” tutorial on becoming a Korean Abstract artist. The works on view, which have been created by borrowing from and imitating elements of the show, pinpoint the mechanism of the art market through the language of memes. This also reflects the artist’s intrigue in questioning the role of art in the contemporary art market within the structure of capitalism.

– Arario Gallery

Upon entering the exhibition space—transformed into a black box—the audience will find themselves in a surreal landscape of luminous, surging waves resembling a brilliant, starlit night. Titled Starry Beach (2020), the installation that has been designed specifically for Kukje Gallery’s K3 space instantly provides a multisensory experience for the viewer. Accompanied by the sound of crashing waves, the high definition projections of waves rushing up and down the 6-meter high walls punctuate the pitch-black surroundings with a unique visual rhythm. a’strict takes inspiration from the infinite complexity of nature, in particular the diverse visual and sonic characteristics of water. The unit’s unprecedented digital interpretation of waves and ability to powerfully choreograph water within an interior architectural space successfully envision the marriage of contemporary art and technology at its finest, stimulating the viewer’s subconscious and evoking our shared associations with and reliance on water. The synesthetic qualities of Starry Beach transcend elements of mere visual spectacle or sentimentality by reinterpreting the physical properties of water, effectively transforming both the viewers’ perceptions of the space and their bodies.

– Kukje Gallery

Barakat Contemporary presents a solo exhibition of the artist Hassan Hajjaj, A Taste of Things to Come, from August 5 to September 27, 2020. Hassan Hajjaj moved to England with his family at a young age and is an artist who lives and works in Morocco and England, using photography as his main medium. The title of this exhibition, A Taste of Things to Come, is a message that reveals an embracing worldview that looks at the future through a constructive and positive perspective, taking care of one another and moving forwards at a time when humans are faced with global change. Through his body of work, the artist seeks to convey the importance of sharing the various cultural tastes of the world in which we live and communicate with each other.

– Barakat Contemporary

Portrait Fist explores how we understand and consume images of faces. From people, celebrities, virtual characters, and highly schematized symbols, we encounter countless faces in daily life. From them, we interpret how familiar we are with them, one’s identity, nationality, political stance, or even the course of life and fate. It stands askew, always substituting for something else.

– Art Sonje Center

In her sculpture and installation work, Mire Lee uses machinery that operates by simple principles, along with materials that can be felt with the hands. For an artist who regards it as important to touch materials by hand as she works, machinery is a key element that contributes propulsion and repetition to the movements of the substances she touches. Her new work Carriers (2020), which is being shown for the first time in this exhibition, is a large kinetic sculpture that uses a hose pump, with a form resembling an animal’s digestive organs. The installation/sculpture work repeats movements as it sucks up, transports, and extracts viscous matter. As the substance moves through the sculpture’s structure, sounds are produced at odd moments along with the rhythm of the machinery movements.

– ART SONJE CENTER

This show introduces the history of APMA through a wide range of artworks it has collected, encompassing paintings, metalcraft, woodcraft, and textile works. As the first exhibition dedicated to its traditional art collection, it attempted to show a large number of works to reexamine the value and historical significance of Korean traditional art.

– Amorepacific Museum of Art

Chiharu who projects the trauma of death in her work uses a human’s finiteness and its unsettling inner side as her main subject. The artist also interprets death as the new beginning rather than “the end”, and further continues to reflect on the dichotomous boundaries, personal existence and identity that exist in the contemporary era. One of Chiharu’s most representative series is the installation piece with thread skein forming a shape of human blood vessels throughout the space. Through the complex spider web of entangled threads in a space, she visually embodies not only the agony of life and death but also the exploration on existence. Furthermore, these threads refer to the numerous interrelated thoughts and the relationships with surroundings needed to confirm one self’s identity. In essence, Chiharu continues to explore the existence and the innerness through her thread works as well as sculptures reminiscent of cells containing everyday objects which recall her memories.

– Gana Art Center

Bringing together a focused selection of works that employ light as their primary medium, Bending Light charts the evolving affinities between Peter Alexander, Robert Irwin, James Turrell, and Dan Flavin.

– Pace Gallery

In the opening scene, the two children gleefully describe the beautiful decorations and rich desserts that they see in the house of a wealthy family nearby. When Bérylune says that it is wrong for the rich not to share their cakes with Tyltyl and Mytyl, the boy corrects her. It is enough that he gets to watch others’ happiness; their joy does not create envy in him. The theme is emphasized again when the children meet the Luxuries, particularly the biggest one of all, the Luxury of Being Rich. When Tyltyl turns the diamond, the hall is bathed with a dazzling brightness, and the Luxuries run wildly in search of a dark corner where they may hide their ugliness from the ethereal light. The names of such Happinesses as Innocent Thoughts and Seeing the Stars Rise and of such Joys as Being Good and Maternal Love affirm Maurice Maeterlinck’s view that true happiness lies in simple things, particularly in the warmth of family love.

At the end of the play, Tyltyl shows what he has learned about happiness. He looks out the window at the forest and remarks how beautiful it is. The inside of the house looks much lovelier to him than it did before. Also, he creates great happiness for another by giving his pet bird, which seems much bluer than before, to the sick child.

– Wikipedia (The Blue Bird)

Kim Jun-geun was a painter active from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. He never achieved the fame of Kim Hong-do or Shin Yun-bok, the two most prominent genre painters of the Joseon period. However, he painted a more diverse range of folk customs. His genre paintings are considered invaluable in that they depict livelihoods, food, clothing, housing, rituals, and games popular among Koreans from a century ago more vividly than the photography that was introduced to Korea in the late nineteenth century.

– National Folk Museum of Korea

The exhibition’s title, Bottomless Bag, is taken from the bag appearing in the animated film Inside Out (2015). Filled with the main character’s memories and their associated orbs, along with an assortment of other objects, the film’s imaginary bag was chosen to illustrate the exhibition’s core concepts of ‘memory’ and ‘collection.’

The Korean title of the exhibition references the school supply–filled ‘object bags’ sold to students in Korea during the 1980s and 1990s. Remembering this nostalgic object of the past, the exhibition hopes to examine the times and memories connected by the objects.

In this exhibition, the space itself becomes the designer’s ‘object bag,’ where the images exhibited in the space become the ‘objects’ that evoke past memories and serve as the designer’s tools for a new experiment. The exhibition invites visitors to experience the meaning of those found objects collected and archived by Na Kim inside the museum space.

– SeMA

Deploying the concept of “family” to represent social solidarity, this year’s second-edition exhibition Looking for Another Family presents Asia as a public platform on which to discuss and share diverse issues concerning the Asian territory. In this scheme, the museum serves as an open space for discussion, gathering people of all generations and socioeconomic statuses for artists and audiences to envision “another form of a family”—a fluid platform for empathy and solidarity.

Featured in this exhibition are 15 teams of artists from eight Asian countries—Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines—who depart from contemplation on their own identities to explore wider realms of consciousness: their own communities, societies, countries, and eventually, the world. The artists also offer opportunities for viewers to involve themselves in active communication not only through artworks comprising performances, photographs, and videos, but also through workshops in the forms of a snack cart, farming, an investment booth, a music video screening, a newsroom, and a roundtable discussion.

– MMCA

The exhibition features 22 works across multifaceted categories, from sound installation, audience-driven performance, interactive sound installation, light art to visual music by 13 internationally recognized artists and collectives. With this exhibition, D MUSEUM is being reinvented as a new art platform where 13 sound spaces await to elicit awareness, sentiments and memories of individuals. In infinite yet transient aural world the audience will be reintroduced to the sense of hearing and guided into the journey of space, time and sound.

– D Museum