Media artist initiates Queen Exhibition in Seoul

Kim Hyung-kyu, 36, a media artist, curated a Queen Exhibition which kicked off on Sunday in Seoul and will run until October. He majored in communication and media arts, and is working as a director of music videos, films and advertisements in Seoul. / Courtesy of Korean Video Art Archive

By Jung Hae-myoung

British rock band Queen's biopic Bohemian Rhapsody swept Korea last year, motivating some loyal fans to go to movie theaters again and again, leading to sales of nearly 10 million tickets.

Spurred by the rare, huge success of the musical film, the "Queen phenomenon" hit the local art scene.
Starting Sunday, "Bohemian Rhapsody: The Queen Exhibition" opened for Korean fans at the Ara Art Center in Seoul, making it the first ever Queen showcase in the form of art.

Kim Hyung-kyu is the key driving force behind the Queen exhibition in Seoul. He has been working as a director of music videos, films and advertisements. In 2017 he won the Grand Prix of the 2nd VH Award (Hyundai Motor Group Media Art Award).

"We submitted the proposal to the Queen Production website. Honestly I didn't set my expectations high about the realization of it," Kim said.

"The idea came to me when I talked with Seo Jung-won who is an installation artist. We received the answer in three months. Jim Beach, who is well-known as the manager of Queen, found our proposal interesting and gave us the green light to go for it as we planned."

Rather than just showing the British rock band Queen, Kim wanted to add artistic interpretation to the work and created art pieces inspired by the band's music.

"I think Jim Beach especially took interest in the fact that this is an art exhibition rather than an archive of their music," Kim said. "He concurred with our idea that rather than presenting historical objects of Queen, it would be more appealing to reinterpret its music based on contemporary society," Kim added, emphasizing the lyrics contain messages about society that can also apply today.

"Considering the film 'Bohemian Rhapsody' impacted younger people a lot, we created this exhibition to meet their expectations," Kim said.

For the exhibition, seven artists participated ―six from Korea and one from England―who recreated Queen's music into various forms of art using 10 different sections of the hall.

"At first it was quite hard to host an exhibition because I am originally an artist," Kim said. "We got help from curators in the field and thought over and over how to impress young visitors."

"At first we wanted to open the exhibition in January when the band was scheduled to perform in Korea, but we realized it was too tight to prepare," he said with smile. "Still the July deadline was too tight for artists to prepare their work, but the Queen Production helped us a lot to prepare and meet the deadline," Kim said.

The exhibition will continue at the Ara Art Cetner in Insa-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul until Oct. 6.