Kukje Gallery will participate in Art Basel's OVR:2021 from 9 through 12 February 2022. One of Art Basel's series of initiatives that provide online viewing environments designed to facilitate the very highest level of virtual visual art experience and acquisition, OVR:2021 will feature 59 galleries from 21 countries, focusing on works made in the past year. The upcoming iteration follows Art Basel's OVR:2020, the very first of the fair's series of 'freestanding, highly focused, thematic edition[s],' with each participating gallery showing no more than 8 works simultaneously in order to create a highly curated experience.
Kukje Gallery's virtual booth on OVR:2021 will feature new works by contemporary Korean and international artists. This selection will include important pieces by internationally acclaimed artists such as Haegue Yang's Mesmerizing Lantern – Four Guardians in Carbonous Mesh (2021), a sculpture suspended from the ceiling which incorporates hanji (traditional Korean paper) with stainless steel- and brass-plated bells. First introduced in Kukje Gallery's K1 space last year as part of Haegue Yang's showcase titled Mesmerizing Mesh, this work focuses on the production of shamanistic objects by way of folding and cutting hanji, a tradition that plays a significant part in the gut (Korean shamanistic rituals) tradition. Experimenting with and further developing relevant methodologies of punching holes in the hanji to let it breathe, Yang highlights the elaborate translucency of the material, effectively molding the space by weaving and interweaving delicate layers of folded paper. Opening on 5 March, the artist will be the subject of a major solo exhibition titled Haegue Yang: Double Soul at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, Denmark, which will bring together recent and existing works spanning multiple mediums.
Also on view in Kukje Gallery's virtual booth will be Jina Park's Packing (2021), a painting which depicts an art handler packing an artwork. First shown at Park's solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery Busan last year, this piece is based on a photograph that the artist took during her site visit to the gallery the year before. The painting demonstrates the artist's keen interest in and command of a painterly perspective on everyday moments. Park's works delicately frame figures quietly concentrating on their work, away from the public eye and in sequestered corners that fancy spotlights have left behind. The presentation will also highlight the internationally acclaimed film director Park Chan-wook's Face 166 (2021). Having joined Kukje Gallery's roster of artists last year, this is Park's first-ever encounter with the fair audiences, providing a unique opportunity for him to introduce his approach to photography, in particular his interest in how coincidence and spontaneity function in images and how they can provide 'antidotes' to his meticulous filmmaking practice.
Shown alongside these works by some of today's most relevant Korean artists will be those by renowned international artists including Julian Opie's new animated LED film Nighttime 3. (2021), which depicts city dwellers in East London ploughing through the streets in protective winter clothing. Part of Opie's celebrated ongoing series that depicts the act of 'walking,' these poetic figures capture the natural beauty of ordinary ambulatory movement. Kukje Gallery's virtual booth will also showcase the Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset's Study for Tailbone (2021), a model of the large-scale sculpture titled Tailbone (2019) which was on view at the artists' first solo exhibition with Kukje Gallery in 2019. Adopting familiar formal elements of mid-century modern sculpture, and referencing iconic works of established modern masters such as Barbara Hepworth and Jean Arp, this provocative work evokes multiple layers of meaning and invites candid meditation on our relationship with our bodies, evolution, and the tradition of sculpture itself. Also on view will be Daniel Boyd's Untitled (MIVPFADL) (2021), a portrait of an indigenous Pacific Islander which challenges preconceptions of the 'representation of people in the Pacific Islands.' Executed with Boyd's signature technique of using clear dots of glue to cover the surface of the painting in order to serve as 'lenses' to shift our worldview, the work confronts established perspectives of Australian colonial history.
Currently on view at Kukje Gallery Busan is Life, a solo exhibition of the celebrated Korean painter Sungsic Moon. The exhibition demonstrates Moon's unique painterly language and introduces approximately 100 new 'oil drawing' works which involve a unique process where the artist uses a pencil to carve and draw directly onto the impasto surface of wet paint. The show will remain on view through 28 February 2022.
Kukje Gallery will also mount an extensive solo exhibition of the pioneering Dansaekhwa master Ha Chong-Hyun on 15 February 2022, spanning all three spaces of the gallery's Seoul branch. The show precedes Ha's upcoming survey presentation opening on April 21 at the historical Palazzetto Tito as the official Collateral Event of the long-awaited Venice Biennale.