FEB 11 – MAY 12, 2024

"ONLY THE YOUNG: EXPERIMENTAL ART IN KOREA, 1960s–1970s" at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s is the first North American exhibition to explore the groundbreaking work of a generation of artists who emerged in the decades following the Korean War (1950–53). The exhibition offers unprecedented insight into a moment in which artists in Korea began to take a stance against what they saw as a limiting approach within the local art world and instead embraced innovative and often provocative practices.

Dissatisfied with the abstract style that dominated the work of the Korean art establishment, these young artists sought new modes of artistic production that would be capable of capturing their dissonant and rapidly changing realities. Confronting a period of intense cultural transition, they worked both collectively and as individuals in pursuit of an artistic process whose complexity could meet the rapidly evolving social and political landscape of the newly formed Republic of Korea (commonly known as South Korea), grappling with its colonial past and a present that witnessed rapid industrialization and an influx of foreign goods. Taking up an expanded, transdisciplinary approach to their creative output, these practitioners adopted mediums such as assemblage, installation, and happenings and employed industrial materials and new technologies. Their engagement with the new provided a framework to produce art at the forefront of the global avant-garde while remaining embedded within their local contexts. This generation lost momentum in the late 1970s but would gain wider recognition in the early 2000s, when the art historian Kim Mikyung revisited the period, referring to their movement as “experimental art.”

Featuring nearly eighty works and archival materials, Only the Young centers a moment of unprecedented creative energy in South Korea’s art history as the country’s culture experienced a sea change. The works in the exhibition exemplify the radicality, irreverence, and play that have given artistic production during this time its lasting impact on the country’s art community. As a whole, they demonstrate an unwavering commitment to art as a living historical document and posit the artist as capable of reimagining the world around them.

SEPT 1, 2023 – JAN 7, 2024

"ONLY THE YOUNG: EXPERIMENTAL ART IN KOREA, 1960s–1970s" at The Guggenheim Museum, New York

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s is co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.  

“Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s will examine the groundbreaking and genre-defying body of artistic production from an era of remarkable transformation in South Korea. Created by young artists who came of age in the decades immediately following the Korean War, the artworks reflect and respond to the changing socioeconomic and material conditions that were shaped by a tumultuous political landscape at home and a globalizing world beyond. This will be the first North American museum exhibition dedicated to Korean Experimental art (silheom misul) and its artists, whose radical approach to materials and process resulted in some of the most significant avant-garde practices of the twentieth century.”

Mr. Han’s artwork titled “Dancheong and concrete” along with 27 other artists will “identify  the universal themes of contemporary life and art that operate in Korean art beyond boundaries of geography and national identity, establishing supranational cultural bonds in the process.”

NOV 16, 2023 – FEB 10, 2024

"YOUNG SUP HAN: INFINITE RELATION" at The Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Art Gallery, New York

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 16, 6-8 PM



Publication:

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s

Guggenheim Museum Publications
OCT 24, 2023

Young Sup Han (b. 1941) uses two- and three- dimensional works to explore the relation between form and phenomena. Forms, or the objects we see in front of us, are immediate and static, whereas phenomena are fluid and immaterial, such as the way the sunlight falls across the object. Han incorporates “indefinite natural phenomena” in his works, using materials such as boiled acorns, collected dirt, and dyed paper to capture the evocative expressions of nature. Through the use of hanji, Korean mulberry paper, and takbon, the form of Korean printmaking that characterizes Han’s ink rubbing technique, Han is able to depict both form and phenomena of nature.

Han’s practice focuses on the spirituality of nature and its correlation to the artist. The Korean philosophy of nature posits a complementary relationship between humans and nature – the self is inseparable from the surrounding environment. Rough, unpolished, and jagged lines imbue nature with sentiment. With hanji’s permeability for light and air, Han creates raw contours that portray the eternal and infinite cycles of nature. By manipulating the force and speed of his brush, Han seeks the undifferentiated state of the subject within a single movement. The abstract elements display the simplicity and poignancy inherent to the organic properties of hanji itself. Han’s forms capture the grandeur of nature that inspires him, and the Infinite Relation between nature and self.

Edited with text by Kyung An, Kang Soojung. Text by Cho Soojin, Joan Kee, Yeilim Lee, Yoon Jin-sup, and Youngin Arial Kim.

A pioneering survey of Korea’s dynamic postwar avant-garde, with new translations of manifestos, articles, and primary sources

The 1960s and 1970s marked a period of exceptional change in Korea, propelled by rapid urbanization and modernization, and influenced by an authoritarian state at home and a globalizing world beyond. Young artists of the era were not immune to these unprecedented socioeconomic, political, and material conditions, responding with a groundbreaking and genre-defying body of avant-garde art known broadly as Experimental art (silheom misul). Both as individuals and in collectives, these artists broke definitively with their predecessors, redefining the boundaries of traditional painting and sculpture while embracing innovative―and often provocative―approaches to materials and process through performance, installation, photography, and video.

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s accompanies the first exhibition in North America to examine this influential but understudied period. Featuring incisive new scholarship and lavish photography of works drawn from public and private collections across the globe, the volume also brings together translations of articles, artist manifestos, and other primary sources that offer a firsthand perspective on the ideas and discourses then shaping Korean art. What emerges is the story of how this generation of young Korean artists harnessed the power of art to confront and reimagine an ever-shifting present.

Artists include: Choi Boonghyun, Choi Byungso, Chung Chanseung, Ha Chong-Hyun, Han Youngsup, Jung Kangja, Kang Kukjin, Kim Hanyong, Kim Kulim, Kim Tchahsup, Kim Youngjin, Lee Hyangmi, Lee Hyeonjae, Lee Kang-So, Lee Kun-Yong, Lee Seungjio, Lee Seung-taek, Lee Taehyun, Limb Eungsik, Moon Bokcheol, Nam Sanggyun, Park Hyunki, Shim Moon-seup, Shin Hakchul, Song Burnsoo, Suh Seungwon, Sung Neung Kyung, and Yeo Un.