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S E O U L Installation view of CHIHARU SHIOTA’s The Language of God, 2020, mixed media, dimensions variable, at the former Armed Forces’ Gwangju Hospital, 2020. Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation.
Relatively Normal
KIM WHANKI’s Universe 05-IV-71 #200, 1971, oil on cotton, 254 × 254 cm. Copyright Whanki Foundation·Whanki Museum. Courtesy Gallery Hyundai, Seoul.
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In the early days of 2020, South Korea quickly emerged as a hotspot for the virus. By late February, a cluster of Covid-19 cases connected to a religious sect in the southeastern city of Daegu made headlines, and before long, Covid-19 had spread to most of the country’s major cities, compelling the government to implement a rapid and comprehensive testing program that would later become a model for other countries to follow. Innovations such as drive-through testing centers and mobile contact tracing aided South Korea in effectively managing the pandemic, resulting in fewer than 500 Covid-19-related deaths during the first ten months of the outbreak, all while avoiding a total lockdown. Indeed, daily life in South Korea has mostly remained unaffected by the pandemic owing to the general public’s overwhelming compliance with public health officials’ recommendations. In the culture sector, art spaces adopted visitor-reservation systems and limited daily attendance while eliminating openings and transitioning many public programs online. Otherwise, the contemporary art community in South Korea has maintained a strong semblance of normalcy throughout the year, with a few notable exceptions. The trifecta of major South Korean festivals—the Gwangju Biennale, Busan Biennale, and Seoul Mediacity Biennale—were all set to take place in September 2020. By May, however, Gwangju and Seoul announced that they would postpone their exhibitions to February and September 2021, respectively, while Busan declared that it would push ahead with its original timeline. Busan Biennale artistic director Jacob Fabricius underwent a mandatory two-week quarantine before joining the local team to install the exhibition. Most of the international participating artists were unable to do the same, which complicated the production of site-specific commissions. An illtimed September spike in local Covid-19 cases delayed the Busan Biennale’s opening by more than three weeks, leaving just 40 days of public access. Measures to mitigate the biennial’s lost days included a spate of online content such as VR gallery tours and videos. With the biennial’s focus on the locality of Busan itself, however, physical disconnection from the actual exhibition sites left something to be desired for artists and audiences unable to visit. Public museums were the most heavily affected art spaces, with a governmentmandated shutdown from late February until early May and sporadic closures lasting several weeks at a time from June through the end of the year. In the intervening periods when public viewing was permitted, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) held a retrospective of Lee Seung Jio (6/18–11/8), a pioneer of mid-century Korean geometric abstraction, at its Gwacheon branch, where the 63
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understated installation schematics supplied spaces, each of which presented artworks and a cogent framework for experiencing Lee’s archives offering insight into their respective singular vision of rectilinear minimalism. exhibition programs, alongside individual MMCA Seoul’s elegant survey of Haegue presentations by Korean and international Yang, “O2 & H20” (9/29–2/28/21), was likewise artists whose practices challenge dominant notable for its restrained presentation of the discourses in contemporary culture. Timed artist’s profusely referential sculptures and to coincide with Korean elections for the installations. The Nam June Paik National Assembly, Ilmin Art Center mounted “Reality Museum of Art organized Errors” (9/24–1/31/21), a group a strong group exhibition, show that speculated on the “The Better Man 1948–2020” future compatibility of humans (3/24–6/24), that considered and machines with works such political expression in the as American Artist’s 2015 (2019), context of representative which shows the potential for democracy by reflecting algorithmic predictive policing on voting as a platform for technologies to perpetuate contemporary art. systemic discrimination. Similar Least affected by themes were addressed in the pandemic were the “Diplopia” (9/24–11/29) at Arko country’s commercial Art Center, in which artists galleries, several of which considered the polemics of held exhibitions that drew subjectivity amid a culture of sustained and enthusiastic digitally mediated neoliberalism. public attention. Gallery “This Event” (8/12–11/15), a Hyundai marked its 50th well-curated exhibition at the anniversary with a twoSeoul Museum of Art examining part exhibition (4/17–5/31; methodologies of performance 6/12–7/19) of artists the art, from the happenings of the gallery has shown over the 1960s to the proliferation of VR decades, anchored by a Kim performance practices today, Whanki diptych 05–IV–71 struggled to attract audiences #200 (Universe) (1971) that LEE SEUNG JIO, Nucleus, for its robust live program due to became the most expensive 1983, oil on canvas, Covid-19-related restrictions. work by a Korean artist when 124.5 × 39 cm. Courtesy the National Museum of In Gwangju, the Asia Culture it sold at Christie’s Hong Modern and Contemporary Center commemorated the 40th Kong in late 2019. Kukje Art, Gwacheon. anniversary of the Gwangju Gallery presented the debut Uprising with “MaytoDay” of media art collective (10/14–11/29), an expansive show that included a’strict, which presented an immersive siteChiharu Shiota’s newly commissioned specific installation deploying advanced room-size installation, The Language of CG technology to authentically replicate God (2020), of Bible pages tangled in thread the effect of waves breaking on a moonlit as well as a historical survey of Korean shore (8/13–9/27). PKM Gallery hosted woodcut prints visualizing the spirit of conceptual multidisciplinary artist Koo resistance and solidarity at the root of Korea’s Jeong A’s first exhibition at a Korean democratization movement. commercial gallery, with glow-in-thePrivate museums were forced to close dark paintings and an outdoor skatepark during the first wave of Covid-19 cases, (9/30–11/28). Hakgojae Gallery mounted but stayed open from May onward. Art “Art and Words 2020” (7/1–31), a group show Sonje Center distinguished itself with highlighting 16 practitioners from Reality impressive solo presentations that and Utterance, a socially engaged artist implicated the polemics of Korea-Japan group, which was formed in the 1980s and relations: Hwayeon Nam’s “Mind Stream” spearheaded the Minjung (People’s Art) (2/28–4/26) introduced new videos and movement that sought to counter the era’s installations that meditate on performativity, repressive political environment. identity, and nationalism through the lens KIAF Art Seoul, Korea’s premier art fair, of legendary Japanese-trained, Korean opened as an OVR-only event in September. dancer Choi Seung-hee, while Koki Tanaka’s Art Busan, the country’s second-largest “Vulnerable Histories (A Road Movie)” art fair, successfully opened to the public (10/30–12/20) presented a nonlinear in November, albeit with less than half series of short films that document the the number of participating galleries as in prevalence of anti-Korean hate speech in previous years and a drastically reduced Japan and its impact on ethnic Korean attendance capacity. Nonetheless it offered Japanese citizens. Daelim Museum hosted a glimmer of hope for a return to business as “No Space, Just a Place” (4/17–7/12), a usual in the Korean contemporary art world. wide-ranging showcase of ten Korean prominent alternative and independent art A N DY S T. L O U I S