SeogyoSixty 2008: The Battle of Taste
Kim No-am ㅣ Director of Gallery Sangsangmadang
1. The Battle of Taste
“SeogyoSixty 2008: The Battle of Taste” presents a chaotic arena and festival of images made by 60 new artists, taking place at Sangsangmadang, Seogyo-dong, also known as the “Hongdae” area. One of the most brilliant achievements in 21st century East Asia has been the establishment and globalization of contemporary art. At the turn of the century, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese contemporary art was in a mixed state of competition and unity, whereas now, each country is able to stand on its own as a cultural hub. With its reputation as a special art district, Hongdae, in Seogyo-dong, has become a laboratory where we can measure and test the direction of Korean youth culture.
“SeogyoSixty” was conceived to introduce young artists who are expected to have an impact on the Korean contemporary art scene and take a look at their attitude and visions for the future. Starting in 2000, due to the expanded scale of the art market and revitalization of the domestic art scene, there have been a lot of star-artist, centered solo exhibitions and international exchanges. Compared to more general art events like biennales, “SeogyoSixty” is a new type of exhibition that attempts to identify a unique vision and possible model for the contemporary art of tomorrow.
However, this type of exhibition is not completely unique. There have been several previous exhibitions connecting the minds of young artists and the institutions of art world organizers with these efforts in mind. Insa Gallery held such special exhibitions as “Collective Spirit” (1995) and “Factory Art Fair” (2000) that gathered the ideas and desires of young artists in their twenties who were actively working in the center of the Korean art scene. The vision of Korea’s young artists has also been shown during the past 10 years at the Seoul Fringe Festival beginning in 1998. There were also several other experiments of this kind held at such venues as the Haja Center and Artsonje Center, as well as the Anyangcheon Project. This exhibit is in the same vein as many recent exhibitions held at local art museums, like the Seoul Museum of Art, which have organized young artists and art organizers together.
Never bound to a strict set of narrow themes, these past attempts planned in a period of creative outburst at these museums and galleries were successful in bringing young artists’ passions and explorations together. “SeogyoSixty” aims to present a chaotic collection of images with innovative vision and form, as I still believe it is meaningful to hold an art festival showing the interests and desires of young artists.
As the phrase, “There is nothing new under the sun,” suggests, these days, creating something from scratch is quite difficult. I believe that living in a realm of countless images and materials, creating something from something that existed before can actually be a more natural process of creation. “SeogyoSixty” represents the quest to find today’s young artists who are able to re-discover, re-interpret, and newly express someone else’s ideas, images, and forms that have existed before them. During the process, we will reaffirm the defiance and fearlessness of contemporary art, which cannot easily be taught in a conventional manner. Because contemporary art uses the whole way of living we should lead and endure as a workbook.
The phrase, “in and out” can reveal something about the general direction and idea behind “SeogyoSixty,” which is a response to certain phenomena that happen “in and out” of us. The exhibit will attempt to find an underlying structure or idea formed by the conscious and un-conscious activities of the artists, where their sensibilities and expressions meet and collide with each other.
2.”In Figure” and “Out Figure”
“SeogyoSixty” is composed of two parts. Part one, “Out Figure,” is held from February 16th to March 16th and part two, “In Figure,” is held from March 21st to April 20th. By exhibiting in two parts, more than 60 artists will participate, whose explorations, experiments, and images are expected to make a dynamic impression at “SeogyoSixty.” During the exhibition, workshops, participatory art, and performances will also be featured to further reveal these new artists’ vibrant visions for the future.
The categorization of “SeogyoSixty” into “In Figure” and “Out Figure” is not meant to divide the world around the artists, but as a rhetorical metaphor to express a sense of direction and structural frame containing both common artists’ questions as well as young artists’ ideas and reflections about the world.
Participants are active artists who have been spotlighted in the last 2 or 3 years for their unique and consistent work, as well as brand new artists, just entering the scene. The exhibition includes paintings, objects d’art, photography, video, multimedia, interactive media art, and sound art and attempts to show the various experiments and new forms of young artists working in the contemporary art scene.
For contemporary artists, the concept of the figure is always dealt with in relation to ideas of reality, fantasy, or image. For the average member of capitalist society, matters of emotion and feeling cannot be separated from materialism. However, it is not that different from artists wrestling with this idea of the figure. Many artists have already chosen to focus on the ebb and flow of images that perpetually rise and fall in and out of our consciousness and have regarded reality itself as the origin and the cause of this phenomenon. Following the path of contemporary art, these new artists are also in the process of expanding and deepening aesthetic diversity in the environment of today’s society.
