Hopper, Cattelan, Chang Uc-chin: exhibitions not to miss in 2023

Edward Hopper's "Self-portrait" (1925-30) / Courtesy of 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Blockbuster exhibitions, 2 biennales awaiting art enthusiasts

By Park Han-sol

Against the backdrop of the bullish growth of Korea's art market, which surpassed the 1 trillion won ($786 million) mark for the first time in 2022, major museums and galleries are seeking to dazzle their visitors this year with blockbuster exhibitions and showcases of boundary-pushing creators.

Also awaiting the art lovers are the two leading biennales ― Gwangju Biennale and Seoul Mediacity Biennale ― as well as the second edition of Frieze Seoul that took the country's art scene by storm last year.

Korea's first-ever showcase of American realist master Edward Hopper will arrive at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) in April. The creator behind "Nighthawks," a hauntingly enigmatic painting of a brightly-lit all-night diner in an otherwise deserted streetscape, Hopper is known for having captured the alienation of the modern man amid the rapidly changing metropolis.

The retrospective under the tentative title, "Edward Hopper: On the Road," co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, is designed to give a peek into the artist's iconic mid-century oeuvre through some 150 paintings, drawings and archival materials.

Chang Uc-chin's "Self-portrait" (1951) / Courtesy of MMCA

Trailblazing experimental artists of Korea who revolutionized the country's cultural scene in the tumultuous decades following the 1950-53 Korean War will come under the spotlight at the Guggenheim in New York this September.

"The Avant-Garde: Experimental Art in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s," co-organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), is the first North American showcase of first-generation Korean avant-garde players like Lee Seung-taek, Lee Kang-so, Kim Ku-lim and Jung Kang-ja.

Some 100 pioneering works that were produced in response to the rapidly changing socio-political landscape of post-war Korea will first be displayed at the MMCA Seoul in May before traveling to New York four months later.

Another notable show hosted by the MMCA will be the grand retrospective of Chang Uc-chin, one of the key modern Korean art masters alongside Lee Jung-seop and Park Soo-keun. Slated for July at the state-run museum's Deoksugung branch, the exhibition will chart the creative life of the artist through paintings featuring simple, everyday visual motifs like family, nature and house.

Maurizio Cattelan's "Him" (2001) / Courtesy of Maurizio Cattelan Archives

The Samsung Foundation of Culture aims to fill its two recently renovated venues ― Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul and Ho-Am Art Museum in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province ― with wide-ranging exhibits to diversify the profile of their presentations.

Among them, the Leeum Museum of Art has chosen to open the New Year with the blockbuster solo exhibition of Italian visual artist and "provocateur" Maurizio Cattelan ― the first of its kind in Korea and the largest ever held since the creator's 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim.

Cattelan rose to global stardom as one of the most controversial artists of our time for his unsettlingly realistic, satirical sculptures that subvert the established notions in politics, religion and art itself.

His "La Nona Ora" brings an absurd scenario to life, where Pope John Paul II gets struck by a meteorite, while his version of "America" is a fully functional toilet made of 18-karat solid gold that anyone can use. In 2019, his conceptual art piece "Comedian," a fresh banana duct-taped to a gallery wall, was sold for $120,000 at Art Basel Miami Beach.

Cattelan's show at the Leeum will be a comprehensive survey of the art world prankster's sculptures, installations and murals produced since the 1990s.

The Ho-Am Art Museum will be back in the public eye in April with a retrospective of Kim Whanki, one of Korea's greatest abstract masters, to mark its reopening.

From the artist's earlier works featuring classical East Asian motifs like moon jars and cranes to his signature mosaic-like dot paintings, more than 90 of his seminal pieces, sketches and archival materials will be on view. This includes his 1971 diptych "Universe 05-IV-71 #200," which fetched 13.2 billion won (HK$88 million) at Christie's Hong Kong in 2019, making history as the most expensive Korean artwork ever auctioned.

Anish Kapoor's "In-between II" (2021) / Courtesy of Anish Kapoor, DACS/SACK, 2022

In addition to museums, prominent galleries nestled in central Seoul's Samcheong-dong neighborhood present a strong lineup of exhibitions as well.

Kukje Gallery will pair innovative mobile sculptor Alexander Calder with minimalist artist Lee Ufan for a joint show in April, and will introduce new paintings of Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor alongside his all-consuming black sculptures in September.

Hakgojae Gallery is getting ready to greet the New Year later this month with a group exhibition of 15 nonfigurative painters in East Asia, while Gallery Hyundai is set to highlight the works of United Kingdom-born creators ― Simon Fujiwara, Sarah Morris and Ryan Gander ― through their respective solo shows in April and September.

Simon Fujiwara's "Who's Bigger Splash (Into the Void)" (2022) / Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Hyundai

Fairs, biennales

The inaugural landing of Frieze in Seoul last September ― the global art fair's first venture in Asia ― marked the city's ascent as a potential new art hub in the region.

In fact, the concurrent openings of Frieze Seoul and its local counterpart Kiaf Seoul attracted over 70,000 visitors in just four days. While the exact figures were never disclosed, the combined sales of the two events are "estimated to be almost half the size of the Korean art market in the first half of 2022," according to the report Korea Art Market 2022.

Whether the second edition of Frieze Seoul, on tap for Sept. 6, will continue its winning streak remains the talk of the town this year.

As for the biennales, the 14th edition of Gwangju Biennale, Asia's largest and longest-running survey of contemporary art, will run from April 7 to July 9 under the theme inspired by the chapter of a classical Chinese Daoist text ― "Soft and Weak like Water."

Helmed by artistic director Lee Sook-kyung, who also serves as the senior curator of international art at Tate Modern, the 94-day event brings in some 80 artists and collectives to examine transnational postcolonial narratives both within and beyond the context of Korea's southwestern city that witnessed the 1980 pro-democracy uprising.

September will see another major biennial art event: Seoul Mediacity Biennale. Its 12th edition, curated by artistic director Rachael Rakes, will span SeMA's main building and underground bunker-turned-museum as well as the Seoul Museum of History. The show aims to forge new, alternative links between art, media infrastructures and the urban fabric of Korea's capital city.