The 58th Venice Biennale is here, and this year’s event is sure to attract artists and art lovers alike by the tens of thousands. From its beginnings 125 years ago as an international art exhibition honoring the anniversary of the Italian king and queen, the Venice Biennale has come a long way and sets the standard for contemporary biennial exhibitions worldwide. The biennial format has proven to be a vital platform for bringing together artists and artworks which might not otherwise come into contact; its success can be measured by the sheer number of international biennial exhibitions currently on offer around the world—nearly 200 at last count—with new ones vying for viewers’ attention each year.
A major development at this year’s Venice Biennale is its increased inclusion of female artists who, for the first time, outnumber male artists in the International Art Exhibition. Gender equity is trending throughout the National Pavilions and collateral events as well, establishing a new standard for biennial exhibitions worldwide. Participation by Korean artists is a superlative example of this trend—the International Art Exhibition and Korean Pavilion each feature three women artists, with the latter also organized by a female curator. Furthermore, the International Jury (charged with awarding the exhibition’s coveted Golden and Silver Lion prizes) includes four women on its five-person committee. Korea is represented on this year’s jury by Sunjung Kim (director, Gwangju Biennale Foundation), who previously served as commissioner of the Korean Pavilion for the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005.
Seoul Art Friend has compiled the definitive list of Korean art on view at this year’s Venice Biennale, from the Giardini and Arsenale, to satellite exhibitions, to pop-up projects during the opening week. We’ve got it all covered so you won’t miss out on seeing all the best Korean art on view during the ‘Olympics of the art world.’
Official Venice Biennale exhibitions
May You Live in Interesting Times
11 May – 24 November 2019
Central Pavilion (Giardini) and Arsenale
https://www.labiennale.org/en
Officially known as the International Art Exhibition, this section presents works by 79 artists who challenge existing habits of thought and open up our readings of objects and images, gestures and situations. These works reflect upon precarious aspects of existence today, inviting viewers to entertain alternative perspectives, and to discern the ways in which “order” has become the simultaneous presence of diverse orders.
The exhibition’s title is drawn from an alleged Chinese curse used in 1930s Great Britain, indicating a time of political and economical unrest and heightened world crises. Curated by Ralph Rugoff (director of the Hayward Gallery, London) the exhibition does not have a theme per se, but highlights an adventurous approach to art-making and a view of art’s social function as embracing both pleasure and critical thinking. The exhibition encourages viewers to reconsider the meaning of so-called facts by suggesting other ways of connecting and contextualizing them.
“May You Live in Interesting Times” reflects the multi-dimensional art practices of its participants by dividing its exhibition into two parts: “Proposition A” in the Arsenale and “Proposition B” in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini. All of the artists appear in both exhibitions but show very different types of work in each venue, thus allowing for multiple perspectives and statements from each contributor. This year’s International Art Exhibition includes three Korean artists: Lee Bul, Suki Seokyeong Kang and Anicka Yi.
Lee Bul (b. 1964) was last featured in the 1999 Venice Biennale, where she awarded an honorable mention for her participation in both the International Exhibition and Korean Pavilion. This year, she presents three works; Scale of Tongue (2017-2018), a sculptural installation which references the 2014 Sewol Ferry Disaster in its resemblance to a partially-submerged ship’s hull; Untitled (Willing To Be Vulnerable — Velvet #6 DDRG24OC) (2017), a painting made with mother of pearl, acrylic paint, PVC panel and acrylic panel in collage on velvet; and a new installation, Aubade V (2019), a four-meter high structure created using melted barbed wire taken from guard posts inside the Demilitarized Zone with attached LED light boards flashing messages in Esperanto and Morse code.
Suki Seokyeong Kang (b. 1977) joined the ranks of Korea’s leading contemporary artists last year when she was featured in the Shanghai Biennale, Liverpool Biennial and Gwangju Biennale; held a solo exhibition at ICA Philadelphia; and received the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel. At the Venice Biennale this year, Kang presents Land Sand Strand (2018 – ), an installation and video which visually interprets Joseon dynasty-era music and choreography, activated by performers during the exhibition’s opening; and the sculptural Grandmother Tower (2010 – ) series, in which thread is wound to cover metal armatures which are assembled to resemble the artist’s grandmother’s posture and height.
Anicka Yi (b. 1971), who shot to international prominence upon winning the Hugo Boss Prize in 2016, is known for her sense-stimulating works which combine scientific and artistic practices. Her ability to engage the intimate sensations of taste and smell—and our innate reactions to both—render her conceptual and interdisciplinary work simultaneously inviting and repulsive, forcing viewers to experience this paradox of perception. For her participation in this year’s Venice Biennale, Yi presents Biologizing the Machine (tentacular trouble) (2019), in which internally lit yellow chrysalises dangle above small craters on the gallery floor—the former filled with animatronic moths, the latter with algae-saturated fluid.
History Has Failed Us, but No Matter
11 May – 24 November 2019
Korean Pavilion (Giardini)
http://www.korean-pavilion.or.kr/19pavilion/index.html
The Korean Pavilion exhibition presents three women artists from Korea and the Korean diaspora who engage with historical representations of gender through a rubric of research: siren eun young jung, Jane Jin Kaisen and Hwayeon Nam. Their practices pursue critical reflection based on a strong gender consciousness as they examine the circumstances of the present and parse the history surrounding the modernization of Korea and East Asia. Across the board, these artists bring the voices of the veiled, the forgotten, the abandoned and the condemned into the spotlight, suggesting alternate interpretations of Asian history faithful to the female experience.
The artist selection and theme for this year’s Korean Pavilion were decided by commissioner Hyunjin Kim, an accomplished female curator currently serving as lead curator for Asia at KADIST. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from the first sentence of Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko (2017), a multigenerational narrative of a diasporic Korean family whose will to live, despite all the failures and hardships brought on by the course of history, defines their existence during the turbulent times of Asian modernization in the 20th century.
Winner of the 2018 Korea Artist Prize presented by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), siren eun young jung (b. 1974) has centered her practice over the past decade on yeoseong gukgeuk, a genre of Korean traditional theater featuring only women actors that has all but disappeared today. Her new work for the Venice Biennale, A Performing by Flash, Afterimage, Velocity and Noise (2019), documents the performance of second generation gukgeuk actor Lee Deung Woo (b. 1936) and contextualizes her legacy among contemporary queer performers who challenge gender norms. Exploring in these performers’ contestation against aesthetic canons, the artist lures the audience into an audiovisual setting activated by the feast of light, noise, and the moving body.
Jane Jin Kaisen (b. 1980) deals with notions of memory and displacement in her work, reflecting her own diasporic awareness and experience as an adopted child to Denmark. In Community of Parting (2019), a new video work presented at the Korean Pavilion, Jin Kaisen invokes the Korean shamanic myth of Bari using a nonlinear narrative to address issues related to abandonment and separation. This work is an outcome of the artist’s long-term research into Korean shamanism and communities affected by war and division, allowing Jin Kaisen to delve into stories of resilient women and images of borders throughout the history of East Asia and the Korean peninsula.
Choi Seung-hee (1911-1969), a legendary but controversial Korean choreographer and modern dancer, is the focus of two archive-based works by Hwayeon Nam (b. 1979). Her video installation Dancer from the Peninsula (2019) explores this complicated female artist’s life through found footage, proposing a multilayered reading of her personal aspirations and their conflict with the pressures of outside forces that bent her career trajectory to serve other ends. Her mixed media installation A Garden in Italy (2019) activates the outdoor space at the rear of the Korean Pavilion building, filling it with plants native to Asia which have proliferated throughout Europe and playing a 1936 recording of Choi singing the Western song “A Garden in Italy,” originally by Englishman Billy Cotton.
Pop-up exhibitions at Venice Meeting Point
Not far from the entrance to the Arsenale, the Venice Meeting Point serves as a platform to encourage an international dialogue in contemporary art. Presented by My Art Guides and held at the Navy Officer’s Club, the Venice Meeting Point opens for 5 days during the Biennale opening week, offering a dense cultural program under the title ‘Asia Focus.’ In partnership with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and supported by SBS Foundation, the Venice Meeting Point’s programming includes two temporary exhibitions aimed at introducing emerging and notable Korean contemporary artists to a wider audience.
Tilted Scenes—What Do You See?
7 – 11 May 2019
Navy Officer’s Club, Arsenale
http://myartguides.com/venicemeetingpoint/
This pop-up exhibition organized by MMCA features nine contemporary artists from Korea—Inhwan Oh, Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, Yang Ah Ham, Noh Suntag, Sanghee Song, Minouk Lim, Back Seungwoo, Na Hyun, and mixrice—selected among the artists shortlisted in recent years for MMCA’s Korea Artist Prize. Through works that incorporate the unique regional narrative of Korea, these artists examine the power of the ‘unseen’ aspects of existence that limit our daily endeavors, exploring notions such as nationality, identity, ideology, systems, and regulations.
Curated by Jowoon Park, all the stories from the exhibition’s nine selected artists are specifically rooted or attached to local contexts in South Korea. Of note in this presentation are new and recent works by Inhwan Oh, who recreates on-site a localized version of his installation piece Where He Meets Him in Venice (2019), and artist duo Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, who present the single-channel video Freedom Village (2017-2019) along with their new research project on the Korean demilitarized zone.
Koo Jeong-A: Prerequisites 7
8 -12 May 2019
Navy Officer’s Club, Arsenale
https://acuteart.com/koo-jeong-as-drawings-brought-to-life-in-ar-for-the-58th-venice-biennale/
Acute Art presents the first augmented reality exhibition by Koo Jeong-A, whose work work incorporates derivative objects with the capacity for transformation, still and moving images, sound and scent. “Prerequisites 7” consists of a collection of pen sketches from her book Nomos Alpha (2018) as well as her Instagram account. Visitors will be able to view the works by downloading the free Acute Art app and pointing their phone in the direction of the My Art Guides Venice Meeting Point as they approach. König Galerie is also presenting a solo exhibition of Koo’s work as part of the ‘Asia Focus’ program at the Venice Meeting Point.
Satellite exhibitions
Yun Hyong-keun Retrospective
11 May – 24 November 2019
Palazzo Fortuny
https://fortuny.visitmuve.it/
This first European retrospective dedicated to Yun Hyong-keun (1928-2007) has been organized in collaboration with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and is curated by Kim Inhye, a leading expert on the work of the Korean master. This exhibition follows the critically-acclaimed exhibition of Yun’s work at MMCA Seoul in 2018, and includes additional works from Korea and around the world to present a large-scale retrospective exhibition spanning three floors of the Palazzo Fortuny’s spacious Gothic architecture. As in the 2018 exhibition at MMCA, the artist’s atelier has been recreated to offer viewers the opportunity to experience the Yun’s studio surroundings more intimately. The decision to present Yun Hyong-keun’s work in Venice is also based on the conviction that his art is in particular harmony with this city of land and water.
Lee Kang-So: Becoming
8 May – 30 June 2019
Palazzo Caboto
http://www.galleryhyundai.com/en/?c=exhibition&s=1&gbn=view&ix=466
Gallery Hyundai presents an exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Lee Kang-So, a pioneer of avant-garde performance art in South Korea in the 1960s and ‘70s. Through seminal installation works reproduced for this presentation, archive photos of the artist’s performances, abstract paintings and ceramics, and video, “Becoming” reveals insight into the artist’s interpretation of the cosmos, the orderly system of nature, and becoming and disappearance.
Sang Woo Kim: Public Toilet
29 August – 24 November 2019
Venice Art Projects Space 992/a
http://www.veniceartprojects.com
Sang Woo Kim activates the concepts of imitation and originality in this project featuring works based on recognizable pieces by contemporary artists including Elmgreen & Dragset, Sarah Lucas, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. In so doing, Kim examines the copy as vehicle for critique of consumerism in contemporary society, proposing new models for repurposing and reusing extant signs and symbols rather than innovate entirely new ones.
Personal Structures – Identities
11 May – 24 November 2019
Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora, Giardini della Marinaressa
https://ecc-italy.eu/exhibitions/2019art
Hosted and supported by the European Cultural Centre and spread across three venues, this exhibition includes over 200 artists from around the world. “Personal Structures – Identities” seeks to create a space for critical discourse regarding the concept of identity as seen through the lenses of time, space and existence.
Korean artists featured in the omnibus exhibition include: Vio Choe, Jeongeun Choi, Son Il and Youngmin Choi (Palazzo Bembo); In Hyuk Choi, Insook Choi, Sung-Kyun Goo and Jihyun Vania Oh (Palazzo Mora).
