Not-to-miss art exhibitions, fairs in 2022

Partial view of installation artist Suh Do-ho's clay "Artland" project, which will be exhibited at the Buk-Seoul Museum of Art in northern Seoul in July / Courtesy of SeMA

By Park Han-sol

As Korea continues to rise as a cultural behemoth in the 21st century, with the streak of successes it has achieved in music, TV and films, art museums and galleries here are also eyeing to promote what they have started calling "K-art," in connection with "hallyu," or the Korean Wave.

By organizing joint exhibitions with overseas art institutions and making efforts to boost the profiles of rising and established Korean creators ― especially in time for the inaugural world-renowned art fair, Frieze Seoul, in September ― museums have expressed their aim to make 2022 "the new year of promoting K-art."

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) announced in early January that it has been invited to this year's "documenta," a major international contemporary art exhibition held every five years in Kassel, Germany. During the three-month show, scheduled to kick off in June, the museum will present "2022 MMCA Asia Project in dOCUMENTA Kassel 15," featuring five Korean artists and designers to materialize its ongoing research on Asian contemporary art.

Another international event awaits the MMCA in September, when it will co-organize the exhibition, "The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art," with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). While the country's traditional artifacts and contemporary art have been introduced and collected overseas for years, this exhibition will be the first time for Korean modern art produced from before the 1910-45 Japanese colonial era to after the 1950-53 Korean War to come into the spotlight at a major museum in the United States.

"It's truly unprecedented to present Korean modern art pieces like this at a museum abroad," MMCA Director Youn Bum-mo said at a recent press conference. "We have a very close relationship with LACMA, so hopefully, this can also lead to a future exhibition on the country's contemporary art."

Kwon Jin-kyu's terracotta sculpture "Self-portrait" (1968) / Courtesy of SeMA

The Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) has set forth its goals to bring global attention to two pioneering sculptors: the late Kwon Jin-kyu, who strived to achieve "Korean realism" through figurative terracotta sculptures; and Chung Seo-young, who incorporated unconventional materials found in industrialized societies ― like Styrofoam and plastic ― into her pieces, thus paving the way for the country's contemporary art scene during the 1990s.

"Compared to how well-known Kwon is in the Korean art scene, his international reputation remains criminally low," said Kim Hee-jin, the director of SeMA's curatorial bureau, adding that the large-scale retrospective in March in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth is part of its efforts to highlight his work on an international stage.

"And when the Frieze Seoul takes place in September, which will likely draw in many overseas visitors, the museum will showcase a retrospective of Chung … in addition to releasing an English publication about the artist's work."

An installation view of Suki Seokyeong Kang's Prix Baloise 2018 exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg in 2019 / Courtesy of Studio Suki Seokyeong Kang

This focus on the museum's role in the global promotion of Korean art has also been reflected in the Leeum Museum of Art, which reopened last October after a hiatus. The museum had only been showcasing its permanent collection since 2017, following the sudden resignation of its director Hong Ra-hee, widow of late Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee.

"Although Leeum is considered one of the representative contemporary art institutions of the nation, there still remains a lot to be done to further build its presence in the international art scene," Kim Sung-won, the museum's deputy director, told the press during the reopening event. "Only then can it serve as a catalyst to support Korean creators to gain global recognition."

Accordingly, the museum has unveiled its plan to resume "Artspectrum 2022" in March, a biennial exhibition series it has been organizing since 2001 to call attention to the works of emerging local artists with promising talent. A month later, it will host the first large-scale solo exhibition of visual artist Suki Seokyeong Kang, the 2018 winner of Baloise Art Prize at the Art Basel fair.

Nam June Paik's 18.5-meter-tall video tower "The More, The Better" unveiled in 1988 at the MMCA Gwacheon in Gyeonggi Province / Courtesy of MMCA

Year of Nam June Paik

Marking the 90th anniversary of Nam June Paik's birth this year, the MMCA finally began its test run to re-operate "The More, The Better," the largest video tower ever created by the video art visionary, in January.

Composed of 1,003 cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors, the 18.5-meter-tall tower was first installed at the museum's Gwacheon branch in 1988, but had been switched off since 2018 due to the malfunction of its aging primary components.

After having repaired 735 monitors and replaced some with LCDs, the museum launched a trial run of the fully working installation, which will last for six months, with varying hours of operation.

In celebration of the relighting of "The More The Better," two exhibitions will be held in Gwacheon ― "The More, The Better Archive" in June and "Paik Nam June Effect" in November ― to share the details of the installation's three-year-long restoration process and study the father of video art's continuous influence on the present-day Korean art scene.

In November, SeMA will jointly host the exhibition, "Seoul Rhapsody," with the Nam June Paik Art Center in Gyeonggi Province to revisit the artist's substantial body of literary work and explore their nonlinear, poetic nature.

In addition to Paik, a flood of solo shows featuring renowned contemporary masters both here and abroad will take place across museums and galleries in Seoul.

Korea's first solo exhibition of Berlin-based Hito Steyerl, an influential media artist and innovator of the essay documentary, will unfold at the MMCA Seoul in April. In 2017, she topped the U.K. magazine ArtReview's annual ranking of the 100 most influential people in art, becoming the first female artist to do so.

Other notable shows will present: Suh Do-ho, an installation artist whose defining oeuvre consists of otherworldly fabric replicas of his former homes, at the Buk-Seoul Museum of Art in July; Kang Yo-bae, a first-generation artist of the 1980s political "Minjung Art" (or People's Art) movement, at Hakgojae Gaillery in August; Lee Seung-taek, a seminal figure in Korean experimental art for introducing the concepts of "non-sculpture" and "non-art," at Gallery Hyundai in May; and two iconic creators of the 20th century, innovative mobile sculptor Alexander Calder and minimalist artist Lee Ufan, at Kukje Gallery in September.

Hito Steyerl's "SocialSim" (2020) / Courtesy of the artist, New York-based Andrew Kreps Gallery and Berlin-based Esther Schipper

Fairs, biennales to watch out for

With Seoul named as the first Asian host of the much-anticipated Frieze Art Fair, a prestigious global platform for modern and contemporary art, in September, many expect the new found boom within Korea's art market in 2021 to continue this year.

The four-day event will kick off on Sept. 2 at COEX in southern Seoul, held concurrently with Korea's largest international art fair, KIAF Seoul. More than 250 galleries are expected to participate in the two events ― Frieze Seoul hosting around 100 and KIAF Seoul, 160.

The Busan Biennale, considered one of the leading art biennales in the country along with the Gwangju Biennale and Seoul Mediacity Biennale, will unfold in August. Helmed by Kim Hae-ju, the former deputy director of the Art Sonje Center, the show will revolve around a reinterpretation of the experimental spirit that captures the recent history and identity of the southeastern port city.

Lastly, the previously postponed 59th Venice Art Biennale will be held from April 23 to Nov. 27, under the theme of "The Milk of Dreams." The Korean pavilion's exhibition, featuring the idea of "Campanella: The Swollen Sun," will be curated by art professor Lee Young-chul.