SEOUL, South Korea—The lightness and familiarity between Philippine and Korean cultures extend to the arts. As mentioned last week on this space, Seoul has over 100 museums and galleries, which is less a suffocation for non-art enthusiasts and more of a diverse catalogue for every visitor who steps foot in the nation’s vibrant capital.
Among the rows and rows of art establishments in Samcheong-dong, or Seoul’s center of art and culture, is PKM Gallery. Regarded as one of the leading contemporary art galleries in the world, the space represents prominent Korean and international artists.
Owner and namesake Park Kyung-mee founded PKM Gallery in 2001 when she served as the commissioner of the Korean pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale. The gallery has transferred to three locations since then, before settling in 2015 at its current location, a former mansion which features a sprawling exhibition space of 576 square meters, heightened by the elevated ceilings and staircase.
On display during our visit was a permanent exhibition featuring four artists. Showcased upon entry are three works by Yun Hyon-keun, a representative artist of the Tansaekwha movement, or Korean monochrome painting, the rise of which we chronicled on this space a week ago.
On that story, we quoted renowned curators Sam Baradouil and Till Fellrath from their 2014 Whitehot Magazine interview about their take on Tansaekwha. They said Western minimalism is perceived as reductionism, while the Korean approach is “more about accretion and layering.”
“This is where the energy in these works reside,” they added.
The same holds true for the three Yun pieces. A glance at the works reveals little—as what glances do with all minimalist creations—but to inspect the pieces more carefully is to peel the layers of not only the scrutinized piece, but the psyche of the artist as well.
Tansaekwha artists lived through tough times. They experienced the Korean War, survived the Japanese occupation, and crawled through military dictatorship. Overwhelmed by dominating external forces, they wanted to return to their Korean roots, as their stylistic tendency shifted away from subjects and toward the exploration of the material’s limits.
This is on display at Yun’s 1990 piece, titled Burnt Umber & Ultramarine. What appears to be plain, broad brush of black paint on the sides of the canvas is actually multiple coats of oil on linen, using a color mixture of, as the title suggests, ultramarine blue and burnt umber.
“The void in the middle represents the gateway to heaven, while the columns represent Earth,” said PKM Gallery Exhibition Manager Yeran Jang.
Other pieces on display at the gallery are the painted glass spheres of Danish-Icelandic large installation artist Olafur Eliasson. The piece, titled Pivotal Study, mimics the phases of the moon, and is engaged in a dialogue across the room with a moonlight-exposed photo by British artist Darren Almond, titled Fullmoon Above the Sea of Fog.
Southeast of PKM Gallery, along Yulgok-ro, is the can’t-miss structure of Arario Museum in Space. The modern art museum is one of Seoul’s biggest architectural marvels that was established in 1971 as the office building and residence of famed Korean architect Kim Swoo-geun.
In 2014, the peculiar plant-covered structure was reopened as the exhibition space it is today. Arario Museum in Space houses a permanent collection that features the private collection of Arario Inc. founder Kim Chang-il, which totals over 3,700 pieces of contemporary artworks from all over the world collated over 35 years.
One of the featured pieces in the space is a full-size sculpture of a Lamborghini Murcielago by prominent Korean artist Osang Gwon.
The sculptor is known for deviating from the notion that sculptures should be heavy and solid, using photo sculptures where he pastes zoomed-in photographs of his subject onto light Styrofoam. His recreation of the Italian supercar, however, follows traditional sculptures wherein Gwon used 1.5 tons of bronze on the piece and covered it with a thick layer of orange paint, which dried as it oozed, disguising from viewers the piece’s bronze composition.
According to Jina Kim, curator of Arario Museum in Space, the piece personifies their space in general.
“The room where the car is was the actual garage of the building,” she said. “It is a piece that is contemporary, and shows the history of the building at the same time.”
One of the more important pieces here is a rare Marc Quinn piece, which Kim said introduced Arario Museum in Space to the general art-viewing public.
Since 1991, the British contemporary artist made a self-portrait for every five years using 4.5 liters of his own blood. The amount is the total quantity existing in the human body. There are only five such pieces in total, and all are held in shape using a special refrigerating system. Arario Museum owns the version made in 2001.
Kim said the work was made at a time when Quinn was an alcoholic, and the artist wanted to talk about the addiction through his work.
“The piece shows the fragility of human beings, destined to be dependent on the surrounding environment for its existence,” she said, adding that the piece is very fragile and hard to maintain. “It is interesting to ask the visitors without prior knowledge to guess what the artwork is made of.”
Elsewhere in the brick museum, which is an artwork in and of itself with swirling staircases and secret passages, are pieces by Filipino artists Leslie de Chavez and Geraldine Javier.
Displayed in one exhibition room are four works by de Chavez that talk about social issues in the Philippines. One piece, titled Under the Belly of the Beast, depicts a man positioned as if hanging on a cross, with the slums of the Philippines crammed on his stomach.
Meanwhile, Geraline Javier’s Weavers of Time features the three Fates in Greek and Roman mythology, which represent the past, present and future—a commentary about how the fates of people are in the hands of the Gods.
Kim said both artists are quite popular with visitors.
The other must-visit art centers in Seoul are Kukje Gallery, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and the National Museum of Korea, which houses more than 70 of the 360 national treasures of Korea.
Image credits: Arario Museum