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 ARKIV 103 objects
Read 9,470
관리자 2013-03-25 09:14
ARKIV
For “Garden of Learning”, Norwegian artist Guttorm Guttormsgaard proposes a succession of rooms beginning with a camera obscura. The subsequent rooms display the artist’s own collection of artworks, artifacts and books, including his own opus magnum: ARKIV.The camera obscura is a completely dark room. A light beam projects through a tiny hole, casting an image of the world outside upside down on a screen. This image reveals the world as an apparition rather than a fact, thus contradicting our experience of being born into a world that always already exists.The next room we enter is still clad in darkness. Two objects await us: a massive piece of wood and a moveable tractor wheel filled with pebbles. Some of Guttormsgaard’s artworks can be seen on the walls: prints of moving stones, variations on sea waves and drawings of the wooden piece (a seaworn stub). Once our eyes have been cleared in the camera obscura, these objects awaken our senses of touch and hearing.The third room displays some 100 objects, images, prints and books in a loose, associative fashion. Every single item has been culled from Guttormsgaard’s own, vast collection (from which the artist has conceived more than 60 exhibitions over the last decade or so).
The artist’s choice for “Garden of Learning” includes a Korean lumberjack’s tool, a Japanese Mangwa from the late 19th century, a series of postcards with images of Norways’s mountain roads, the eyes of a toy doll, a Jaguar car logo figure and a photo book by Weegee.There is no overall classification for this idiosyncratic collection. Instead, the artist proposes a form of sensual collaboration with the viewer – one that requires an open mind. The associative connections we make will probably begin with the formal properties of any given object. They will be based upon a strange, very personal mix of conscious and unconscious memories (of things we remember vaguely or that look similar), as well as bits and pieces of knowledge (the Jaguar driver might easily recognize the logo, but may not be able to place the lumberjack’s tool).Finally we come to ARKIV, which is displayed in one long row of open pages. This book, made by Guttormsgaard, could be called the destiny of the artist’s collection. In it, every item is given its proper place.