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| Lee Jung-seob's "Bull," (1950s) currently on display at the "MMCA Lee Kun-hee Collection: Masterpieces of Korean Art" exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in Seoul / Courtesy of the MMCA |
By Park Han-sol
Following the quiet year of 2020 engulfed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Korea's art market saw a new boom this year.
Part of the surging public interest was fueled by the unprecedented donation of late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee's massive art collection. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that represent the ownership of digital assets, became another attractive buzzword for a new sector of collectors.
An influx of new, younger art buyers was soon witnessed at major local art fairs and auctions, which all saw record turnouts and sales. In addition, there was the expanding presence of internationally renowned galleries in Seoul.
Below are the top news stories that grabbed the headlines in the Korean art scene this year.
1. Lee Kun-hee's donation
In late April, late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee made headlines once again after his passing, when his vast art trove was donated to state-run museums.
The sheer extent and size of the collection was unprecedented ― more than 23,000 pieces, including a handful of National Treasures, spanning from the early Bronze Age all the way through to the modern era.
Seoul's two major museums ― the National Museum of Korea (NMK) and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) ― were named as the biggest recipients of the donation.
Exhibitions showcasing selected masterpieces from the collection opened at the two museums in July, with both being fully booked for months.
While the NMK's "A Great Cultural Legacy" ― which displayed the iconic Joseon-era ink and wash painting, "Clearing after Rain on Mount Inwang," by Jeong Seon as its highlight ― ran until September, the MMCA's "Masterpieces of Korean Art," featuring modern Korean masters like Chang Uc-chin and Lee Jung-seob, will go on until March next year.
Then, for the next three years, the art collection will tour at least 10 different local museums across the country.
In November, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism confirmed the establishment of a new museum that will house Lee's entire collection in a currently vacant plot in Songhyeong-dong, central Seoul, tentatively named, the "Lee Kun-hee Donation Hall."
2. NFTs: Boon or bust?
The latest hyped phenomenon, NFTs, was named Collins Dictionary's word of the year for 2021.
The term burst onto the digital market scene as a one-of-a-kind certificate that can represent the ownership of any digital asset ― from art pieces and memes to even tweets ― as it is registered in a shared ledger, better known as a blockchain.
Some believe that NFTs can bring a new paradigm for both crypto collectors and creators. For buyers, they can serve as an emerging investment opportunity with unexplored potential, while for artists, they can unlock a whole new revenue stream and fan base.
But as much as the concept has generated excitement, a backlash against them has also followed.
Several big-name creators like Park Seo-bo and Lee Kun-yong have questioned the legitimacy of NFT-based works of art.
In June, an auction organized by Wannabe International to sell NFTs for the artworks of modern painters ― Lee Jung-seob, Kim Whanki and Park Soo-keun ― was called off at the last minute after the artists' families and foundations raised the issue of copyright infringement, stating that no consent had been given beforehand for the digitization of the pieces.
Another controversy arose when it was announced that the "Hunminjeongeum Haeryebon," the 15th-century manuscript of the Korean writing system, would be sold as limited edition NFTs, making it Korea's first National Treasure to be put up for sale as virtual tokens.
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| A rendering of Lehmann Maupin Seoul's new gallery space in Yongsan District / Courtesy of Society of Architecture and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul and London |
3. World-class galleries come to Korea
Targeting a burgeoning group of younger art collectors in Korea, a number of internationally renowned galleries have begun to expand their presence in Seoul.
This year alone, the Berlin-based Konig Galerie and Thaddaeus Ropac, which operates in London, Paris and Salzburg, have opened their new outposts in the capital city.
"I opened the Seoul gallery not only to introduce European artists to Korea but also to discover Asian artists, including Koreans," the latter gallery's founder, Ropac, said during the press preview held in October for the inaugural exhibition of the celebrated German artist, Georg Baselitz.
New York-based Gladstone Gallery and Berlin-based Projects announced that they will follow suit next year.
Meanwhile, established players like Lehmann Maupin and Pace Gallery, both of which have branches in London, New York and Hong Kong, made the decision to move from their original Seoul outposts to larger gallery spaces in Hannam-dong of Yongsan District.
Seoul's emerging status as an art hub was further cemented by the announcement that the city will become the first Asian host of the Frieze Art Fair, a leading global platform for modern and contemporary art, in September 2022.
4. Crowded art fairs generate record sales
After undergoing an inevitable series of delays and cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's local art fairs across the country, both big and small, claimed a continuous streak of success.
The 2021 edition of major art events ― including the Galleries Art Fair, Busan Annual Market of Art (BAMA), KIAF Seoul, Art Busan and Plastic Art Seoul (PLAS) ― all saw record turnouts and sales amid surging public interest and a subsequent influx of new, young collectors.
KIAF Seoul grabbed the latest headlines in October, announcing sales of 65 billion won ($55 million) and a turnout of approximately 88,000 visitors. According to the report published by the event's organizer, the Galleries Association of Korea, more than half of its survey respondents (53.5 percent) were newcomers. And among them, 60.4 percent were between their 20s and late 40s.
Another boom in the art market was witnessed in auctions.
Total sales of 10 local auction houses, including leading players like Seoul Auction and K Auction, recorded more than 300 billion won ($250 million) ― the largest amount ever in Korean history.
The most expensive painting sold this year was "Pumpkin" (1981) by one of the most sought-after Japanese contemporary artists, Yayoi Kusama, which fetched over 5.4 billion won ($4.54 million).
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| "Water drop" painter Kim Tschang-yeul, captured by photographer Moon Sun-ho / Courtesy of Gana Art |
5. Kim Tschang-yeul, 'the man who paints water drops,' dies at 91
Kim Tschang-yeul, one of the most influential abstract artists in post-war Korean history, passed away in January at the age of 91.
Kim's name was synonymous with paintings of hyper-realistic water droplets forever suspended on the surface of each canvas.
"To paint water drops is to dissolve everything within them and return to a transparent state of nothingness," the artist once said. "By making anger, anxiety, fear and everything else disappear, we experience peace and contentment."
He was one of the founding members of the Contemporary Artists Association in 1957, producing works as part of the Art Informel movement in Korea. After participating in a series of international exhibitions, including the 1961 Paris Biennale and the 1965 Sao Paulo Biennale, he moved to New York, where he began experimenting with nonfigurative bulbous shapes ― vaguely reminiscent of liquid drops.
But the artist's breakthrough came in 1972, following his relocation to Paris, where the painting "Evenement de la Nuit," featuring a single droplet of water against the empty night sky, was born.
Since then, he dedicated the rest of his life to depicting transparent drops with different mediums ― acrylic, oil paint, watercolor and "meok" (traditional Korean calligraphy ink) ― against equally varied backdrops, from monochrome surfaces to classical East Asian texts, such as "Thousand Character Classic."
In 2016, the Kim Tschang-yeul Art Museum opened its doors on Jeju Island. Last year, it was announced that his residence in central Seoul will turn into another district museum in honor of the artist.
In September, "The Man Who Paints Water Drops," a documentary film co-directed by his son, Oan Kim, and Brigitte Bouillot, was unveiled in Korea for the first time at the 13th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival.
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| Dansaekhwa pioneer Kim Gui-line / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai |
6. Dansaekhwa master Kim Gui-line dies at 85
Kim Gui-line, one of the foundational members of the 1970s Dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) movement, passed away this summer in Paris. He was 85.
Originally a budding literarian, his love for the works of Antoine de Saint-Exupery was what prompted him to leave Korea and travel to France in 1961 ― where Kim eventually turned his eyes to painting, not literature.
While belonging to an earlier generation of Korean artists who settled in Paris, his abstract art nevertheless resonated with his South Korean peers of the Dansaekhwa movement, with a shared emphasis on the palpable density of color and its spirituality.
His oeuvre, spanning over five decades, involved several phases of different experimentations with color.
While Kim focused on objectifying the pure colors of black and white during the late 1960s, he began incorporating an iconic repetition of small squares and egg-shaped dots on monochromatic canvas throughout the next two decades. And it was in the 1990s when the artist brought in a vibrant set of five colors ― red, yellow, green, black and blue ― to his works.
"I started drawing dots in my work after asking a question to myself: 'What gives me comfort and stability when I look at pictures in a world that is full of complicated forms?'" he once told Gallery Hyundai in central Seoul. "A dot can be a start, an end, or become a line, or a form. Time, thoughts and traces are present in the dot."
7. Delayed Gwangju Biennale kicks off
The 13th Gwangju Biennale, one of the most renowned art events of its kind in Asia, began its 39-day-long journey on April 1, after getting pushed back twice due to the pandemic.
Helmed by co-artistic directors Natasha Ginwala and Defne Ayas, the international exhibition brought in 450 works by 69 artists and groups under the theme of, "Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning."
Indeed considered an ambitious event during these times of strict social distancing, the show managed to march on in a hybrid online-offline format, attracting more than 250,000 visitors.
The featured pieces delved into an overwhelmingly broad set of topics, including artificial intelligence, shamanism, postcolonial oppression, feminism and queer identities.
In remembrance of the historic May 18 pro-democracy movement of 1980 that took place in the city, the biennale's foundation also organized the special exhibition, "MaytoDay" ― connecting Gwangju citizens' fight for democracy with contemporary resistance movements from other countries and cultures.
The next edition of the biennale, slated for April 2023, will be led by Lee Soo-kyung, the senior curator of international art at the Tate Modern in London.
