Busan Biennale
The Busan Biennale is a biannual international contemporary art show that integrated three different art events held in the city in 1998: the Busan Youth Biennale, the first biennale of Korea that was voluntarily organized by local artists in 1981; the Sea Art Festival, an environmental art festival launched in 1987 with the sea serving as a backdrop; and the Busan International Outdoor Sculpture Symposium that was first held in 1991. The biennale was previously called the Pusan International Contemporary Art Festival (PICAF) before it launched.
The biennale has its own unique attribute in that it was formed not out of any political logic or need but rather the pure force of local Busan artists’ will and their voluntary participation. Even to this day their interest in Busan's culture and its experimental nature has been the key foundation for shaping the biennale’s identity.
This biennale is the only one like it in the world that was established through an integration of three types of art events such as a Contemporary Art Exhibition, Sculpture Symposium, and Sea Art Festival. The Sculpture Symposium in particular was deemed to be a successful public art event, the results of which were installed throughout the city and dedicated to revitalizing cultural communication with citizens. The networks formed through the event have assumed a crucial role in introducing and expanding domestic art overseas and leading the development of local culture for globalized cultural communication. Founded 38 years ago, the biennale aims to popularize contemporary art and achieve art in everyday life by providing a platform for interchanging experimental contemporary art.
2012 A scene of traces
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관리자 2013-03-25 11:09
Busan Cultural Center
My project was started from the old wall founded in Namsan-dong when I moved my studio there. After getting in a graduate school, it were fully equipped to focus on my work, but I did not exactly know what I should do. At that time, I left the studio offered by school and moved to shabby studio where some colleagues run and located in Namsan-dong Market. It was hard to adapt myself because of old environment there, however, someday, the street sight began to look different to me. Namsan-dong has old environment since 1960s, and the village is filled with traces of time and looked like a painting. After that, I decided to retain records and traces by art project, in case that the village may be disappeared by re-development.
The first step of my work is memorizing found traces, and painting the images on a korean paper at my studio. The Second process is that walking on the street with that painting and hanging it on the wall which brings me immanent emotions. After installing the painting, I take the photograph of it. Lastly, I re-display it in a familiar place, and photograph again. It is a work that combines old trace and present familiar place to create the third new space. I have been working on this project since 2006 and it is continued Namsan-dong Market, Buksung-ro (2009), and Seosung-ro (2010), moreover, it is linked to the recent works in 2011-2012. This project tries to rehabilitate the context of the series with asking myself, "What and how to look at?", by following my perception style that is expending the different spatiotemporal boundary.