스킵네비게이션

Archive

Busan Biennale 2008

이전메뉴 다음메뉴

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.


2008 해바라기의 아이들

Read 11,964

관리자 2009-08-27 15:54

작가HERNAN BAS
Decadence, dandyism and sexuality are all undercurrents of Hernan Bas’ work, paintings which employ imagery from Victorian and adolescent fantasies to address conceptions of beauty, violence and desire. Bas’s paintings are small, frail and sensuously delightful; through their unassuming intimacy, they personify epic romance. Influenced by historical painting, Hernan Bas’s images are touched by a staginess and immediate familiarity that suggests the melodramatic narratives of classic film. While youthfulness and a certain dreamlike quality are always present, darker undertones hint at a more sinister or unstable reality. Further, the viewer is repeatedly placed in the position of the voyeur, intruding upon scene as a predatory witness. Works from the recent Saints and Secret Sects, included in the Biennial, further the artist’s interest in figuring historical and mythological narratives within the imagery and iconography of popular culture, literature, queer culture and religious mysticism. Bas’ characteristically lonely figures are cast as saints, alluding to the cultural preoccupation with the iconography of the holy and aligning it with the supernatural. The artist proposes that the cult of sainthood is not so far removed from secular systems of belief such as secret societies, in that both situations are founded upon the need to belong to something greater than oneself.
- MC, NB, MD

TOP