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.
JANG Minseung
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관리자 2020-09-05 13:20
Born 1979 in Seoul, South Korea
Lives in Seoul
JANG Minseung, voiceless-pitch-dark, 2014, Single channel video, B&W, sound, 25min
MOCA Busan collection
JANG Minseung works across various disciplines including sculpture, furniture design, photography, video, and sound, addressing place and cultural and social issues. In 2005 he exhibited sculptural installations influenced by his interest in furniture design. In these works furniture is seen not as objects that draw attention to themselves, but as items that reflect their environment and culture. Instead of function or appearance, JANG emphasized the setting of these furniture, and documented them in photographs that reflect different cultural and social patterns of behavior. Su Seong Sip Gyeong is a series of photographs taken between 2008-2009 that document the demolition of Okin Simin Apartment Complex. This apartment complex was built in 1971 as part of the first municipal plan to construct Western-style multi-unit housing in Seoul, and was demolished in 2008 to restore the city’s traditional landscape. The photographs document a vanishing landscape, capturing views of Inwangsan from the demolition site.
JANG’s synesthetic exhibition The Moments (2012) was a collaboration with musician Jung Jaeil. The exhibition invited the audience to encounter the sea via media work presenting special audiovisual memories and experiences. Nature is an important thematic and aesthetic element in JANG’s work. His film Over There (2018) documented Hallasan and the seascapes around Jeju over a period of 1,000 days, capturing momentary glimpses of appearance and disappearance, life and death. The video installation Voiceless (2014) addressed the sorrow and tragedy of lives lost to national disasters, and extended a message of consolation to the victims and the families of victims of the Sewol Ferry sinking. The desolation and vastness of a dark ocean representing historical tragedy, the use of sign language and the gestures of the actors together constitute a tribute, a sort of wreath laid in communal sorrow and to grieve those who do not have a share in the world.