Meet The Korean Artists

UKYA is delighted to announce a new arts partnership South Korea with Seojung Art Centre and Superior Gallery, Seoul.

Selected through a national open call, 13 of the best young artists in the UK will travel to Seoul in October 2017 to present their work alongside 9 young Korean artists. During their time in South Korea the artists will participate in collaborative workshops, talks and visits to local cultural events, facilitating intercultural exchange and international collaboration. Artists work will be presented at the National Assembly of Korea in partnership with Seojung Art Centre.

Joining our UK Artists for this inaugural presentation of UK and Korean work are nine exceptional young artists based in South Korea. Please read on to find out more about them and their work.

WANG, ZI WON

Wang’s work begins from the birth of Z, a mechanical man. He refers to this man as a post human species, appropriating his own appearance and naming the mechanic man Z after his own name’s English initial. Wang’s work aggressively questions on human existence and makes an attempt to graft this onto something mechanical rather than passively accepting the future. It also takes an objective attitude embracing all contrasting things, such as bright and dark aspects, merits and demerits, fear and curiosity. What’s most interesting is his attitude toward and process of his work keeping his balance without leaning toward one side.

NAM, WON HEE

In Nam Won Hee’s artwork, which unfolds any given winter’s memory under severe windstorm through plain context, is there only silence where all creatures are holding their breathing. ‘Even when he was seeing the sea where sea fog is violently soaring and only looming silhouette is glimmering in front of eyes among thick fog making it impossible to see even one inch forward and raindrop touch him’ he puts a world in his position into camera. Engagement into instant object demolishes his obsessed landscape, distance and boundaries, and this condensation with pure time gives a robust echo only by itself even without specific narrations.

LEE, SEUNG TAE

Lee Seung Tae takes an anthropologist's attitude for his work. This work is an experiment on what relations receivers have in conventional language and images under excessive production and consumption by removing or twisting them via various media and methods. For such procedures and phenomenon, he casts his set value inadvertently and transfers it to testees (audience) and then he observes it as an observer being away from his works. His first exhibition title ‘From mind – it heads for Su’s mind again” is a result of several mechanical translations for his own handwriting of ‘Let it be transferred from mind to mind!’ in first paragraph of Kyrie in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. He experiments possibility of “Communication” that is like ethics of language named media to be equipped naturally and its power and overturn of authority.

CHOI JEONG MEE

Based on the public character of the rabbit, her subjective viewpoint might be naturally reflected. The symbolism that the authors hope to grant is the result of conscious expression of the images followed by the combination of various shapes and based on the subjective thinking of the authors, it attempted to more efficiently express human daily life and fantasy by connecting the rabbit’s head and the human body. In addition, in this viewpoint, it attempted to search for various expressions about the relationship of human beings and animals by comparing and analysing the authors and the works related to her works.

KIM, GEUN YOUNG

"Water Sound" is an art work that explores internal movements in unknown inner flow inside body. Kim Geun Young feels her through flow of body under unconsciousness and all senses and also faces herself. Nobody is able to know collision with her inner side in firmly closed lips.

The artwork expresses a process that contacts whole body and rubbing it and is becoming one moving body being started with vibration to be lifted up from essence of art work and daily routine smeared with it, and she feels and reacts to her through respiration and finds out how far such reactions reach out.

They constitute no boundary, collide and are mixed up and experience such moment with those who see it.

RED PIG FLOWER

"Dance of infinity series" is series of multimedia video works based on the idea of re-incarnation. Collaborating with IZEN studio and dancers Red pig flower created the beautiful piece to represent the idea of infinity which fundamentally based and derived from Buddhism. The video emphasize the beauty of lines made by body movements, the body awareness activated by every conscious and unconscious thoughts, and layers of dance performance which represent different method of deaths and rebirth. Red pig flower examines existing and interrelated relationships between the cyberspace and different perspectives of reality.

AHN, SOOIN

Ahn, SooIn's art works are started with an imagination that animals and plants conciliate ‘maintaining certain harmonisation in spite of very vulnerability, which couldn’t exist in reality due to geological, weather conditions and time difference. These organs exist in their parts regardless of inevitable combination for their intrinsic functions. Daring blank attracting views very strongly as if its objects are owner of screen and surrealistic structures such as sensitive shapes and colours that mutate from the original are reproducing strong abject visually without any excuse. Her incarnated organs that went through expansion and mutation are weird, attractive and peculiar.

LEE EUN WOO

Proposition penetrating Lee, Eun Woo’s work is a place and frame that takes existence out expressing ‘Body emits internal sound and expresses emotion as an entity communicating with world’ In fact, body is a symbol of actual existence ‘making it possible for current existence to put into’ and we live by establishing numerous relations based on such symbol. Her work is started with drawing in order to ‘express whole body completely’ and then expresses essence and real existence of human using various body gestures through a series of works derived from several experimental works. They conceal themselves by unclear contours and lumps of flesh drawing boundary between “Me” and “Not me” are appeared to have ambiguity as a mere abstract lump.

HWANG SUN YOUNG

Although memories are created endlessly, they are also erased. First Snow is drawn on light-weighted surface just like a short image which stays instantly and then goes away. This is a device to reflect volatility of memory and a performance that connects oil pastel and wheat powder on a specific part of body and full an empty canvas on bottom. Oil pastel that has roles in its own position leaves trace of behaviours and also repeats that wheat powder oozing from wheat powder box covers or blurs pictures. This behaviour that repeats drawing and erasing might be interpreted as a meaningless gesture to some degree. However, creativity of her work is closer to adding existence to existence rather than creation from emptiness.

MagazineUK New ArtistsSeptember 14, 2017magazine, M1