Kukje Gallery will participate in ART BUSAN 2022 at the BEXCO Exhibition Center from 13 to 15 May 2022. Celebrating its 11th anniversary and currently one of Korea's three largest art fairs, ARTBUSAN's upcoming iteration will feature 133 exhibitors from 21 countries, including from both Korea andabroad, signaling strong renewed interest in the art market following the return to normality. ART BUSAN2022 will present a wide variety of programs that introduce art from a myriad of styles and perspectives.The fair will consist of the Main Galleries and Solo Booth sections, the latter of which introduces solopresentations of young and emerging artists under the age of 45, alongside the Experiment section whichshowcases a distinct group of 14 monumental exhibitions, and the Conversations section which grantsvisitors an opportunity to tune into discussions across different topics between art professionals.
At ART BUSAN 2022, Kukje Gallery will showcase celebrated works by a roster of leading modern and contemporary Korean and international artists. This selection will include Work (1990) by Yoo Youngkuk,one of the founders of Korean abstract painting and a contemporary of Kim Whanki, best known for hisvibrant vocabularies that distilled Korean naturalism into a formal vocabulary consisting of point, line,plane, and color. One of Yoo's later works, the painting on view depicts a blue stream, drawn across thelower parts of the canvas, behind which sits a geometric landscape of hills and valleys. In anticipation of theartist's forthcoming retrospective marking the 20th anniversary of his death—to be held across all threespaces of Kukje Gallery Seoul from 9 June to 21 August 2022—the presentation of this iconic work isexpected to highlight Yoo's importance to Korean contemporary art history, for local and international artenthusiasts alike. The booth will also include Écriture (描法) No. 100109 (2010), a warm-hued large-scale workby the Dansaekhwa pioneer Park Seo-Bo, who is the subject of the upcoming comprehensive monograph_Park Seo-Bo: Écriture_, to be published by the leading international art publisher Rizzoli. Also on view will beKibong Rhee's new painting Where you stand B-2 (2022), a dreamlike representation of natural elementssuch as water, fog, and trees. For the Solo Booth section, Kukje Gallery will exhibit, for the first time,paintings including the exemplary Bronze Woman (2021) by Heejoon Lee, who transforms mundane urbanlandscapes into a combination of bold compositions and unique palettes.
Works by leading international artists include the British-Indian contemporary artist Anish Kapoor's Organic Green over Brandy (2020) from his iconic series of concave discs, coinciding with the artist's major solo exhibition at the Gallerie dell'Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin in Venice, throughout the duration of the Venice Biennale. elfterjanuarzweitausendundzweiundzwanzig (2022), a new work from Ugo Rondinone'sseries of 'cloud' paintings that are painted on a cloud-shaped canvas using a sponge to achieve anatmospheric effect, will also be shown on-site. The Swiss contemporary artist is the subject of the soloexhibition, burn shine fly, at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista also in Venice. The pioneeringAmerican video artist Bill Viola will be represented through Addie (2008), which showcases his visuallanguage defined by the use of slow-motion technique. In addition, the contemporary artist Jenny Holzer'sthe optic becomes (2018), from her ongoing series of Redaction Paintings, appropriates declassified butoften heavily redacted U.S. government documents released by the Freedom of Information Act.
Kukje Gallery's current solo exhibition by Ugo Rondinone, titled nuns and monks by the sea, will run at both the gallery's Seoul (K3) and Busan spaces through 15 May 2022, allowing Busan presentation to coincidewith ART BUSAN 2022. Rondinone's third solo exhibition in Seoul and his first in Busan, the show featurestwo unique bodies of work by the artist, including his painted bronze sculptures and watercolor paintings.Meanwhile, Colors of Yoo Youngkuk, Yoo Youngkuk's retrospective in commemoration of the 20th anniversaryof the artist's death, and his second show at the gallery since 2018, will be held from 9 June to 21 August 2022.