By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
A rich diversity of prints from the printmaking world can be seen in the First International Printmaking Biennial, which has traveled to Seoul and is currently being held at the Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Pyeongchang-dong.
Fifty-six leading printmakers from Canada, United States, South Korea, Japan, United Kingdom and China are participating in the biennial, which runs through June 24. The exhibit first opened in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, September 2006, and has also been shown in Toronto and Kyoto.
The Maritime and Atlantic Printmakers Society (MAAPS), a federation of printmaking groups in Canada, organized the biennial. The biennial is aimed at showing the variety of printmaking techniques, styles and themes from around the world.
Peter MacWhirter, chairman and exhibition coordinator of MAAPS, said printmakers were not required to discuss a particular theme in their works. ``We had no desire to impose thematic structures that would limit artists to only the generation of interpretive pre-determined picture-stories. After all, artists and printmakers have their own stories to tell,'' he said.
Twenty Canadian artists are participating in the exhibition, with prints reflecting the country's rich cultural heritage. Christine Lalonde, assistant curator Canadian prints and drawings for National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, said Canadians printmakers as well as printmakers from other countries, are facing new challenges.
``Common ground exists in the issues printmakers face today, primary among them the question of how current print practices _ from the use of a digital matrix to the rise of the monoprints _ are altering the very definition of print itself ... The diversity of each artist's response to these challenges is the reward as well as a testament to the power of prints to express the complex nature of our times,'' she said.
The biennial gives a glimpse into contemporary printmaking scene of each country. Chinese and Japanese prints combine traditional with modern elements, while British and American prints push the boundaries of creativity.
Six Korean artists, namely Kim Seung-yeon, Bae Nam-kyung, Hwang Jeong-il, Jung Mi-oak, Shin Seung-gyun and Um Jeong-ho, are participating in the biennial.
``The chosen artists are relatively young and have firm commitments to making prints as an important element of their expanded practices as artists. Consistency and dedication in individual approaches to printmaking is also essential,'' Kim, a Hongik University professor, said.
Kim said his work, ``Night Landscape,'' is a ``focused concentration on urban subject matter though creative matter of eyesight which leads to limitless city landscapes that are meant to illuminate the complexity of modern culture.''
The exhibit will next travel to Red Gate Gallery, Beijing from July 19 to 31.
For more information, check www.totalmuseum.org or call (02) 379-3994.