Yongju Kwon, Dongkyu Kim and Woosung Lee “Floating, Concrete”
Doosan Gallery
This event has ended.
DOOSAN Galley New York presents its first exhibition in 2016, Floating, Concrete. This exhibition is curated by Sunghee Lee, who participated in the 3rd DOOSAN Curator Workshop in 2013, and it introduces the works of three Korean artists: Yongju Kwon, Dongkyu Kim, and Woosung Lee.
Floating, Concrete presents three young Korean artists who explore socio-local contexts within the fluidity of everyday life and grasp them with perceptive affection to convey concreteness in their works.
Mid-step, without warning, fragments of life floating around us vividly jolt our consciousness. Garbage scattered on the street; flyers wrapped around telephone poles; trivial items in street stalls; people who collect, hang, and sell things to make a living; or passers-by who rush past quickly without looking at their surroundings?somehow these otherwise mundane elements find their way to the forefront of our awareness. Affection is a force that can compel us to experience everyday things concretely, or tangibly. Three artists searching for affection in art at its closest to life gather momentarily on a certain street. They collect objects floating in the street, inject meaning into images taken from the street, and go directly to audiences in the street.
The artists in Floating, Concrete develop their works by drawing out an emotional connection with objects and scenes that they have come across by chance, all while deliberating and questioning the means by which to deliver such affection. Yongju Kwon roams around, finds discarded objects and debris floating around the city, and stacks them on top of each other to create precarious structures; Dongkyu Kim begins with a painting that he found by chance in a flea market and attempts to express the specific sentiment on life that the painting might embody; and Woosung Lee paints on fabric the daily scenes that he witnessed while commuting from one place to another, then brings his paintings to public spaces to convey new experiences to the people there.
Yongju Kwon’s Waterfall: Trickledown examines and embodies the “trickle-down” or supply-side theory of economics. This economic policy was originally introduced to Korea from the United States but ultimately had the effect of accelerating economic disparity in Korea. Since the late 2000s, the number of people who scrape together a living by recycling waste such as discarded paper, plastic materials, and scrap metals has experienced explosive growth in Korea. Kwon became fascinated by the way that these people create looming stacks with the garbage that they have collected in their handcarts. Inspired by their form, Kwon initiated his Waterfall series, each rendition of which presents an extremely realistic and concrete artificial waterfall pouring water over a haphazard collection of garbage that had been floating in the street. For this exhibition, the artist researched and collected recyclable and discarded debris from the streets of New York City, exploring the local context of New York within the Waterfall series in a critique of the failed American economic theory that the Korean government embraced with disastrous results.
Dongkyu Kim’s Solidarity of Pathos series utilizes varied mediums?including video, painting, drawing, performance, and a book?to embody the process of questioning and hypothesizing about the “meaning of the informel painting” that he purchased at a flea market in Seoul. A Nailhead for Escape is a video-format introduction to the entire Solidarity of Pathos series, and he produced his Solidarity of Pathos series of paintings to explore the possibility of identifying with pathos that is expressed in an abstract manner. In this exhibition, the artist re-assembles selected paintings from the original Solidarity of Pathos, which is made up of thirty-three paintings, including the initial painting that the artist impulsively purchased at a flea market. Intrigued by the provenance of this informel painting, Kim sought to trace back the overlapping conceptual and artistic movements, both overseas and domestic, that led to the painting’s creation. Here, he arranges colloquial Korean sentences under the paintings in an abstract yet Western style. While the words may be readable in themselves, the meanings of the sentences are impossible to comprehend to all but a select few who are aware of their particular context. Kim’s sentences reveal concrete aspects of life that cannot be neatly simplified with a single concept, awaken a delicate sense that only specific words can recall, and examine the necessity of a cultural/local lexicon for art to function as a communicative tool.
Woosung Lee hangs up large-scale paintings executed on fabric that depict the people and places, and the stories connected with them, that he has encountered during his everyday comings and goings in the streets of Seoul and other metropolitan cities. He attempts to convey a new affection to the city and its residents through a process of bringing his paintings (that reflect scenes he encountered in the street) physically into the street and discussing them with people walking by. Lee, mainly utilizing painting as his medium, questions what a painting actually means and why he paints and seeks to find answers not only in the realm of art but also from real life. His decision to predominantly utilize industrial house paint and unprimed pieces of fabric that are continuously folded and unfolded as he changes locations reflects his desire to free himself from the traditional confines of the studio/gallery binary and to tangibly “mobilize” his paintings. Through this exhibition, he endeavors to talk to a city and its people while hanging his paintings in subway stations, on empty walls in the street, and in parks in New York City. Ultimately, Lee’s works probe at the elasticity of painting as a medium, the ability of a public space to function as an exhibition space, and the layered possibilities of dialogue between the artist and viewer.
Yongju Kwon (b. 1977, Daegu, Korea) graduated from University of Seoul with a B.A. in Environmental Sculpture. His solo exhibitions include Tying (D Project Space, Seoul, 2014), Waterfall-Structure of Survival (Mullae Art Factory, Seoul, 2011), and Buoy Light (Insa Art Space, Seoul, 2010). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Real DMZ Project 2015 (Cheorwon, Artsonje Center, Seoul, 2015), Young Korean Artists 2014 (MMCA National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Gwacheon, 2014), BONUP: Art as Livelihood (DOOSAN Gallery Seoul, Seoul, 2014), Art on Farm (Jim Thompson Farm, Thailand, 2013), and A House yet Unknown (Art Space Pool, Seoul, 2013), among others. He has also participated in artist-in-residency programs with Gunpo International Art Residency Program and Seoul Art Space, Geumcheon, and is currently participating in the SeMA Nanji Residency. He is the co-founder of buup, an exhibition design company.
Dongkyu Kim (b. 1978, Seoul, Korea) graduated from the department of Korean Language Education, Korea University, and studied Fine Art at Korea National University of Arts in Seoul. His solo shows include Informel Lecture (Project Space Sarubia, Seoul, 2015) and Surfacing (Art Space Pool, Seoul, 2011). He has participated in various exhibitions, including “Informel Logbook” publishing exhibition, Dongkyu Kim (Artsonje Center, Seoul, 2015), Low Burn: Low Voice connecting Hong Kong and Seoul (Art Space Pool, Seoul, 2014), When the Future Ended (Hite Collection, Seoul, 2014), Our Resolution (Peace Museum, Seoul, 2012), and the performance project The Whales, Time Diver (National Theater Company of Korea, Seoul, 2011), among other projects.
Woosung Lee (b. 1983, Seoul, Korea) received his B.F.A. in painting from Hongik University and studied Fine Art at Korea National University of Arts in Seoul. His solo exhibitions include Pulling from the Front, Pushing from Behind (Art Space Pool, Seoul, 2015), Returning Entering Descending Devouring (OCI Museum, Seoul, 2013), Bul Bul Bul (175 Gallery, Seoul, 2012), and he has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including BONUP: Art as Livelihood (DOOSAN Gallery Seoul, Seoul, 2014), Once is not Enough (Audio Visual Pavilion, Seoul, 2014), Love Impossible (MoA Seoul National University Museum of Art, Seoul, 2013), and A Cabinet in the Washing Machine (Seodaemun Recycling Center, Seoul, 2012), among others. He has also participated in domestic and international artist-in residency programs including SeMA Nanji Residency and MMCA National Art Studio Goyang.
Sunghee Lee (b. 1978, Seoul, Korea) received her undergraduate degree in Fine Art and her M.A. in Art History from Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul. She previously worked as an editor at Art in Culture magazine and as Researcher for Korea for the Hong Kong-based Asia Art Archive (AAA). She currently serves as director of Art Space Pool in Seoul. She co-curated BONUP: Art as Livelihood (DOOSAN Gallery Seoul, Seoul, 2014) and organized the exhibitions Low Burn: Low Voice connecting Hong Kong and Seoul (Art Space Pool, Seoul, 2014), and Woosung Lee: Pulling from the Front, Pushing from Behind (Art Space Pool, Seoul, 2015).
Media
Schedule
from January 28, 2016 to March 03, 2016
Opening Reception on 2016-01-28 from 18:00 to 20:00