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 Untitled-Despair Complete
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관리자 2013-03-25 10:19
Untitled-Despair Complete
CLOSER… COME CLOSER…
A central feature of Yongik Kim’s painting is an emphasis on the relationship between figure and ground. While his early work is strongly characterized by the contradictory desire to adhere to minimalist orthodoxy while undermining the integrity or self-sufficiency of the painted canvas, his subsequent and current work relies on a kind of formula. This formula is based on the figure of the “dot” and allows for an endless range of subtle variations.
Though Kim’s painterly intelligence has its roots in the Korean “monochrome” movement of the 1970s and 1980s, his political mind strongly opposed the iconic and perhaps ethical indifference that the movement showed towards a Korea in the throes of a singularly rapid, heavily militarized modernization-process. The effects of this transformation, which began in the 1960s, can still be felt today (particularly in the Korean education system).
The dot was first introduced as a non-painterly material: a circular shape made of rubber. The artist applied these dots on the painted surface in a regular, grid-like pattern. Once this formal solution had been established, Kim began to paint these dots – sometimes in irregular patterns, sometimes in different colors, sometimes with a kind of lighter halo around the dot. Some of his paintings show rectangular shapes as a formal alternative to the dot, and these are also laid out in a grid. Besides the figures (dots or rectangles), the artist emphasizes physical traces of the production process, e.g. shoe prints from his own willful steps over the canvas in his studio.He also applied written commentaries that are either poetic in nature, biographical in style, or repeat – in a fragmented form – sentences Kim formulated in his many critical writings. Nevertheless, these various intrusions of a non-painterly real are always heavily mediated.
For example, the artist doesn’t allow the shoe print to reveal itself in its pure indexicality (as if the canvas has just been kicked); instead he covers it with another layer of semi-transparent white paint.Or he emphasizes the accidental pencil mark by drawing an “O” shape around it.This process of revising the canvas – of putting layer upon layer –is a further characteristic of Kim’s painting, and it often preoccupies the artist for years, if not decades. In some cases, his elaborate commentaries can be found even on the backside of the canvas, thus forcing the viewer to negotiate between a painting’s two sides.