Often found at theaters and museums, Kwon Mee-yoo has covered a wide range of cultural fields from K-pop and dramas to theater and fine art for over a decade. Now as K-Culture Desk editor, she tries to connect Korean culture with global readers through fresh perspectives.
Appreciate modern art in downtown Plateau
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Rodin Gallery, located in Taepyeong-no amid highrise office buildings, seeks to explore the meaning of its space through the “Space Study” exhibition, after changing the name to “Plateau.”
It originally opened in 1999, displaying two works of famed sculptor Auguste Rodin — “The Gates of Hell” and “The Burghers of Calais.” The officials explained that the former name was somewhat misleading as the gallery is not wholly dedicated to Rodin’s works.
Hong Ra-young, deputy director of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art which operates Plateau, said the new name means high plains or sedimentary layers piling up on the artistic highland of the past where artists and art lovers aim to be.
The gallery housed various modern art exhibitions including “Yes Yoko Ono” in 2003, but closed down after photographer Atta Kim’s 2008 exhibition “On-Air” due to a special probe into the Samsung Group.
By Kwon Mee-yoo
The first exhibition of Plateau is titled “Space Study.” The exhibit literally explores the comprehensive meaning of the Plateau as a place and space in general. A total of 14 artists explored the “space” of Plateau and came up with unique results.
At the glass pavilion of the gallery, Kim Soo-ja’s “Lotus: Zone of Zero” infuses a unique breath of fresh air to the entrance of the new Plateau. There are also two works of Rodin on permanent exhibition here.
“Kim’s work reflects the characteristics of the space fully — 384 lotus lanterns arranged in a circular shape and Tibetan, Gregorian and Islamic chants coming out from six speakers fusing the ideology of religion, life and death,” Ahn So-yeon, chief curator of Plateau, said.
Upon entering the white cube, a blue wall that looks like a table of randomly sampled numbers greets visitors. The wall was mostly used as an introductory space for exhibitions, but at the “Space Study,” this also is an artist’s passionate work.
Titled “107 Numbers and 4 Words,” Sasa[44] interprets the year 1999, when the Rodin Gallery opened, in numbers he found in Wikipedia. For instance, the first number 16/25 means the number of the dead and injured during a shooting rampage in Islamabad, Pakistan on Jan. 4, 1999. The blue ground color, also inspired by an exhibition at Rodin Gallery, was the color used on Yoko Ono’s album.
Kim Moo-joon suggests a relatively inexpensive way to “own” museums. His works simplify renowned museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Guggenheim, Tate Modern, Artsonje Center, Leeum and Plateau, only using the facades in one color.
Three photographs by Kim In-sook based on Germany, “Saturday Night,” “Kunstmuseum Stuttgart” and “Walter Knoll,” unravel the contemporary men’s antonymic sentiment of safety and exposure by taking pictures of people inside glass buildings.
Kim Min-ae turns inaccessible space into artwork. “Blind Alley” arouses awareness to the dead space between the glass pavilion and the gallery space by placing a pink-colored fence there. Visitors can see the work through a large glass window.
Kim Do-kyun took pictures of corners of the museum space, while Jung Jae-ho’s “Metamorphosis” expresses distortion of memory through a photo collage.
The exhibition runs through July 10. Admission is 3,000 won for adults. The gallery opens at 10 a.m. and closes at 6 p.m. and is closed on Mondays.
Docent tours are offered at 2 and 4 p.m. every day and an 11 a.m. talk is added on weekends. The “10-Minute Talks” program is available at 12:40 p.m. on Wednesdays for office workers.
For more information visit plateau.or.kr or call 1577-7595.