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 Rotations (Prometheus and Zwitter)
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관리자 2013-03-25 09:32
ROTATIONS (PROMETHEUS AND ZWITTER)
This installation juxtaposes two short 35mm sequences winding up, down, and around two formally very different sculptures, albeit in different directions.The left screen frames a standing male nude, somewhat classical in appearance, holding a burning torch in his outstretched hand, while the right shows a totem-like figure whose expressive elements are much harder to decipher. This second figure, in its likewise outstretched hand, holds a symbolically stylized clock. Also nude, it exposes both a dramatically enlarged, erect penis and a huge vaginal slit.The male nude with the torch adheres to a formal grammar that dates from Greek antiquity, and to this day continues to seek balanced composition in a well-articulated body. The handling of the human figure, particularly the head and face, are nevertheless unmistakably modern. This is indeed an Aryan hero, a rather vacuous embodiment of will power. “Prometheus” was crafted in 1937 by Arno Breker, Hitler’s favorite sculptor.Despite its radically different look, the totem-like figure is also conspicuously modern. Formally unpredictable and therefore full of surprises, the sculpture recalls antique grotesques, but also Etruscan and pre-Columbian art. Only its slightly anti-aesthetic brownish lacquer helps to unify a shape that would otherwise appear fragmented.Karl Genzel’s “Zwitter” [hermaphrodite] draws on the same repertoire of so-called “primitive” forms that were plundered and transformed by early 20th century Western Art.
In reality, “Prometheus” is a larger-than-life-size bronze statue. It was first shown at the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung [Great German Art Exhibition] in Munich, the official platform for Nazi art. Karl Genzel’s “Zwitter” [hermaphodite], on the other hand, is a small wooden sculpture that was shown at precisely the same time – during the summer of 1937 – in Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art]. This infamous exhibition, which took place just a few footsteps away from Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung, was meant to denounce modern art as an inherently regressive project. To prove their point, Nazi-curators displayed key works of avant-garde art side by side with, and in formal juxtaposition to, art from mental patients. Karl Genzel was one of those patients.In summary, in “Garden of Learning“ Telléz is reconstructing a viewing situation or, more precisely, a comparative look that would have been available to audiences in 1937.