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.
2022 Choi Ho Chul
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관리자 2022-12-16 14:04
Hope Bus, Yeongdo, Busan, 2011, 2011(reproduction in 2022), Mixed media, Oil on canvas, 193.9×130.3cm.
On the night of July 9, 2011, 10,000 citizens gathered from all over the country to march from Busan Station to the Hanjin Heavy Industries building in Yeongdo in support of Kim Jinsook, a leader of the Busan branch of the Confederation of Trade Unions, who lived on the crane for 185 days in an act of protest (which lasted for a total of 309 days) for the reinstatement of a laid-off worker. The artist depicts a scene of police units releasing tear gas and firing water cannons upon the supporters who gathered at crane 85 to see Kim Jinsook. It was a clash between the dichotomies of laborers and shipyards, the provincial and metropolitan; between land and sea, locals and outsiders all mixed together under the darkness of night. This work is a re-production that is larger in size, including additional details to what the artist first created for the 2nd Hope Bus protest in 2011, originally published in the Gyeonghyang Newspaper.
* Kim Jinsook was the first female welder to join Korea’s Shipbuilding Corporation (the predecessor of Hanjin Heavy Industries, changed again to HJ Heavy Industries in 2021) at the age of 21. She was later fired by the company in 1986 for union activities, and after 37 years of struggling to return to work, retired after her honorary reinstatement in 2022.
b. 1965, Grew up in Seoul, South Korea
Lives in Gyeonggi-do
Choi Ho Chul presents landscapes with detailed depictions of his memories associated with places. In this way, his images become something akin to experiences. Introducing deliberately distorted compositions to familiar cityscapes, he captures the emotions of places and the people connected with them, representing the temporal flows and movements within landscapes. Also known as the artist behind Tae-il, a cartoon version of the life of labor rights martyr Jeon Tae-il, he held his first solo exhibition Choi Ho Chul (Seonam Art Museum, Seoul) in 2000. Since then, he has taken part in multiple exhibitions and events, including the 4th Gwangju Biennale (2004), Korea Portrayed in Comics (Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, 2019), You & Me___ (MMCA Gwacheon, 2021) and Speak through Comics (BELvue Museum, Brussels, 2021).