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.
2010 Air's Song
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관리자 2011-04-11 23:09
Life Log_Air's Songis one work that, in particular, expresses Komatsu's poetic contemplation of life. A material that has often featured in his work is bird feathers. In Life Log_Air's Song too, the individual bird feathers that he carefully encloses inside multiple transparent tubes float upwards together and then slowly downwards by the air pressure from an air compressor that he controls precisely with a computer. The word "log" in the title of the work is the computing term for "memory." The bird feathers also possess, through their DNA, a memory of life. Komatsu casts the bird feathers separated from the living organism and occasionally used as decorative objects into the moving air again in the way they used to be.
The feathers floating upwards remind us of the fact that they were once part of a living organism, and drifting downwards, of the state of being separated from that living organism, that is, of death. Life and death is repeated with a constant rhythm.