Korea II

“KOREA” presents work by South and North Korean artists in tandem with a few international artists. South Korean artists include Ildan Choi, Sungho Choi, Henry Kim, Myong Hi Kim, Tcha-sup Kim, Kakyoung Lee, Kelvin K. Park, Yooah Park, and Sungsook Setton while North Korean artists are Myong-seok An, Chang-ho Choi, Gye-keun Choi, Ki-man Kim, Sung-il Oh, In-soo Pang, Chang Ri, and a few anonymous artists with Nick Bonner. International artists include Mansheng Wang and the artist collective Lily & Honglei from China. To enrich the context, the exhibition also collects some items from North Korea such as art related books, posters, and stamps. The exhibition does not attempt to intervene in any political matters. Focused only on art, the exhibition is a comparative study that attempts not only to explore arts from the two Koreas, but also to provoke a critical reflection on current international exhibitions that, driven by the force of the global art market, stylize contemporary art, which in turn increasingly becomes homogeneous in appearance. Still, the exhibition opens up a philosophical discourse on the possibility of writing about a deep continuity of perpetually altering contemporary art that advances by the logic of contradiction. The exhibition sets a geographical limit to its investigation of the arts from Korea, which is not to promote Korean nationalism, but to examine a thermocline in contemporary art by looking at the fascinating narratives and frameworks of art from Korea.

​

About “Drum Korea”

​

To enhance the public experience of the exhibition, the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts specially offers “Drum Korea” as a part of the exhibition’s Opening program, presenting a set of Korean percussion music. The repertoire includes Moon Gut (a traditional ritual music that performers play when entering the stage), Jindo Bukchoom (a Korean traditional drum dance performed by farmers), Samdo Sul Changgo (a percussion music widely spread in southern South Korea), and Samdo Samulnori (an ensemble of four percussion instruments). The concert is performed by the New York Korean Traditional Marching Band, a professional Korean traditional percussion group based in Flushing, New York. Members of the band include Chunseung Lee, Sangyul Lee, and Maggie Kim.

​

About the Curator

​

Heng-Gil Han is Co-founder and Director of Korea Art Forum, a New York based not-for-profit organization devoted to bridging the world through art. The current exhibition is an improved edition of KOREA that he previously presented in 2014 at the FiveMyles in Brooklyn, NY.