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.
KOO Donghee
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관리자 2020-09-05 15:07
Born 1974 in Seoul, South Korea
Lives in Seoul
KOO Donghee, C6H2N2O5, 2020, Mixed media installation, variable dimensions
KOO Donghee presents a way to introduce unfamiliarity in the way we view everyday life. She attempts to subvert the familiar reality by inserting coincidental situations into the quotidian, and explores the possibilities of multilayered interpretations of daily life and also her works by applying mechanisms that overturns an ordinary experience. In particular, KOO does not strive to deliver precise explanations however presents a generally ambiguous situation to allow the audience to seek their own perspectives for interpretation of the work through via implicit visual cues.
KOO uses various forms of media including television and internet to collect information on the events happening around her. During her research, she collects anomalies of such events and modifies the images by distorting, downscaling, enlarging, or combining them with other phenomena. Such are images of quotidian events which are ordinary or uncertain, paradoxical or helpless situations and events. Using the images as a reference, she creates video, sculpture and installations. KOO especially focuses on recognizing and facilitating the changes necessitated by physical limitations during production or installation, and takes them into her practice. Adding impromptu ideas along the way, the outcome is a deviation from initial plan, which is ambiguous, spontaneous and offers unexpected sensual experience.