Park Han-sol reports on Korea's financial regulators, along with fintech and insurance. She previously wrote about the art world, from biennales and exhibitions to fairs and auctions, with a focus on Seoul and the figures shaping the scene. Before joining The Korea Times, she spent a year at ABC News' Seoul bureau, contributing to coverage of major Asia-Pacific events.
Sibling artists' creative dialogue in full bloom in their first joint show
"A New Life" at Hakgojae Gallery in central Seoul is the first-ever joint exhibition featuring the two seasoned siblings artists: Yun Suk-nam and Yoon Seok-koo. Courtesy of Hakgojae Gallery
By Park Han-sol
Yun Suk-nam, 85, and Yoon Seok-koo, 77, are the only two out of seven siblings who chose the path of an artist. But throughout their decades-spanning careers, their works had never once shared the same space.
That finally changed this spring with the opening of the two-person show, “A New Life,” at Hakgojae Gallery in central Seoul, in April.
The unexpected sibling revelry is in full bloom as Yun’s diary-like color pencil drawings enter into conversation with Yoon’s fabric-wrapped sculptural assortments of colossal fruits, bikes with training wheels and furniture sets.
Yun, a trailblazer often dubbed “the godmother of Korean feminist art,” is best known for her painted wooden sculptures and installations that resurrect the hidden narratives of women at both state-level and microhistory. In recent years, she has dedicated her energy to creating portraits of forgotten women activists who fought alongside men for Korea’s liberation during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule.
Yun Suk-nam's "Could I Really Go There?" (2001), left, and "Water Scooping Road" (2002) / Courtesy of Hakgojae Gallery
But in this Hakgojae Gallery show, the artist revisits her relatively-unknown sketch series from the early 2000s. These drawings, often accompanied by handwritten text recording her personal musings, reignited her creativity during a time when she was experiencing a drought of ideas, she recalled.
“They started out as nothing more than scribbles, and I would complete 10 to 20 pages a day. It was incredibly fun, almost like keeping a diary of even my most fleeing thoughts,” she said at the gallery last month. “Eventually, I found that it helped release the pent-up feelings in my heart. For nearly two years, I devoted myself almost entirely to the practice.”
In the realm of her freewheeling imagination, most pages curiously depict the artist on a swing.
“I’ve always wished to be floating just 20 centimeters above the ground. As a creative, you shouldn’t be entirely grounded in reality but shouldn’t stray too far from it either. The swing visualizes this desire.”
Yoon Seok-koo's "A New Life (Man)" (2019) / Courtesy of Hakgojae Gallery
Meanwhile, her brother Yoon brings forth his sculptures wrapped in garishly patterned fabrics — a project he initiated in the early 2000s when he breathed new life into abandoned cropped trees by dressing them in some of the most vibrant textiles.
Since then, the scope of his “revived” subjects has expanded to include discarded sofas, vanity tables, bicycles, Venus busts and even a twisted, contemporary reinterpretation of the Vitruvian Man.
For the sculptor, the “A New Life” series represents his gesture of soothing the souls of these “deceased” objects through synthetic materials that symbolize today’s civilization and all its beliefs.
“A New Life” runs through May 25.