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.
2018 Of the Apocalypse
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관리자 2018-08-21 10:51
Oscar CHAN Yik Long
Of the Apocalypse
Four Horsemen
His two works exhibited at this year’s Busan Biennale are also sitespecific. A painting series on translucent curtains Four Horsemen (2018) and a 13 meter-wide mural of the Apocalypse (2018) will be shown at the former Bank of Korea. On each curtain the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Bible’s Book of Revelation are drawn, each of whom symbolizes war, famine, pestilence, and death. In a twist, the horses are replaced by creatures from Chinese mythology. The artist mixes the signs of disaster and misfortune in the East and the West to give a hint of the apocalypse that could come in the near future and to depict the silly desires of humans, who are still obsessed with power, wealth and territory without noticing the ferocious shadows cast on their future. As audiences look over the work, their eyes follow the flow of the story led by the four horsemen who reveal images of a horrible, painful and hellish apocalypse. Although the dystopian future— fusing symbols and myths from the East and the West—originated in the mind of the artist, the scenes of war, famine, pestilence, and death depicted in this work are from our past and something still around us.