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 Electric Kisses
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관리자 2009-08-28 11:26
Fairly large in scale, Electric Kisses offers a space or spaces big enough for a viewer to enter; he or she can experience the work from inside and outside.
In this sense, the sculpture intersects both architecture and non-architecture (such as landscape), embracing the terms and conditions of the both genres. This mixed function of the sculpture seems to satisfy the criteria of what Rosalind Krauss defined as the "category of the marked site?in her essay of ?culpture in the Expanded Field? "Whatever the medium employed, the possibility explored in this category is a process of mapping the axiomatic features of the architectural experience-the abstract condition of openness and closure-onto the reality of a given space."
Can the sculpture, therefore, be seen as marking the site-the Sculpture Garden?
The structure is made of aluminum pipe with solid acrylic rods in brilliant colors attached onto the surface. As the acrylic rods are translucent, the light can pass through them-thus the idea of placing a light inside the hut for special effects. The artist envisions a ?luster?or a group of ?isses?when more than one piece can be made and closely placed together in one location.
I envision the beauty, the wonder and the magical sense of harmony the sculpture will produce when lit at night. Placed in a prominent location at the main entrance to the Sculpture Garden and in front of the yet-to-come art center-supposedly "the largest and the best" (?) art center in Korea-the sculptures are given the important assignment to greet visitors to the Sculpture Garden and the art center, evoking curiosity, fun, and love.
ⓒHeng-Gil Han _ Curator of Visual Arts, Jamaica Art Center, NY