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.
2014 Busan Strait
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관리자 2014-09-16 14:42
2014
Installation, Wallpaper/ PVC/ 798 Factory Mold/ Iron/ Sculpture
Variable Size
Busan Strait
Wang Mai’s environmental sculpture offered an analysis of both a disappearing past and an uncertain future. The metaphor of the strait — a narrow divide that must be controlled and that often creates tension — allowed Wang Mai to posit a parallel between the physical space in which the exhibition took place and the wider geopolitical background against which it unfolded. A geographic and geological feature of an implicitly fraught nature, a strait creates a physical divide alongside a conceptual union. It is the separator, that in separating, brings together. Wang Mai’s deep interest in geopolitics is made most clearly manifest in his choice of materials. For this exhibition, the walls of the space were papered in blue foil wrappers taken from Zhongnanhai cigarette boxes—an iconic Beijing brand named after the compound were the central leadership reside. The floors were covered in pieces of corrugated blue metal cut directly from the roof of Wang’s own nearby studio, pieces of painted steel like those which top so many light industrial and agricultural buildings throughout Northern China, instantly recognizable as architectural fittings of the most basic variety.