KOO HYUNMO

Koo’s penetrating works blur and traverse between the boundaries of two seemingly dichotomous concepts such as reality and fiction, and principle and phenomenon. While Koo reels in places from his personal memory or home into the public space of the exhibition and refresh our recognition of what is public and private, inside and outside, and space and time, he also transforms natural or everyday materials such as paper, branches and stones into works of art. This flexibility enables the audience to become involved in the interpretation of the work in a more free manner, and partakes in the ‘temporal’ journey of his work.

This exhibition is meaningful in that Koo explores beyond the works he has previously presented, expanding his worldview concerning ideas of ‘artificial and natural’. In the age of ‘Anthropocene’, where human activities become an important element in the changes that take place in the global environment and manmade objects actually become nature in daily life, the artist throws endless questions as if the distinction between artificial/artwork and nature is still effective.

Koo’s work presented in Aquired Nature delicately weaves together fragments of nature infiltrated in human life, such as wind, moon and clouds, contextualizing itself in ‘posthumanism’ which envisions the coexistence of human and nature. Artificial but not unnatural, his ‘aquired nature’ in this exhibition reflects the site-specificity of the PKM Gallery annex where the gallery’s large glass window fully captures nature. In this context, Aquired Nature offers a special opportunity through which to meditate upon the relationship between human and nature.

Koo received his BFA degree in Ceramics at Hongik University and BFA in Sculpture as well as MFA under the direction of Professor Martin Hornet at Dresden Academy of Fine Art. Koo mainly works in Berlin, Liepzieg, Dresden, etc., and has participated in exhibitions held at leading art institutions in Korea including Arko Art Center, Sungkok Art Museum, OCI Museum of Art and Art Center NABI. In 2009, Koo received the Art Award from MPI-CBG, the birthplace of Nobel laureates as well as an institution devoted to encouraging interdisciplinary research in the fields of basic science, humanities and arts. Koo’s work is in the collection at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.