The Art Archives, Seoul Museum of Art is an art museum where records and art coexist. Since 2017, when its construction process began, the Art Archives has focused on the value of primary resources for visual arts and has collected 22 collections and more than 55,000 archives produced by artists, researchers, curators, and art organizations. The archives exhibit the collections and projects of the Seoul Museum of Art and were gathered with consideration to the era, media and form of materials in response to the rapidly perishing visual arts resources. Not only has The Art Archives' collection targeted projects from the comprehensive field of visual arts that encompass fine arts as well as architecture, photography, and design, but it has also collected resources produced from various cultural mediations such as research curations, art critiques, and drafts. To take a closer look at its vast collection, Archive Highlight, the Art Archives' first series, presents the collections of Kim Yong-Ik, Kim Tchah-Sup, and Rim Dong Sik, who have engaged in independent activities in the changing history of Korean contemporary art since the 1970s.~~
Kim Yong-Ik (b. 1947) received attention early in his career with Plane Object series, which revealed the three-dimensional materiality of painting by asking questions about the two-dimensional painting since the 1970s. However, in the 1980s, facing the limits of modernist aesthetic, he sealed up his existing works and began to connect his reflection on art with his critical consciousness of reality. Since then, he has been active in conceptualism, public, and ecological art. The Kim Yong-Ik Collection displays the trajectory and range of the changes to his extensive art practices in terms of form and content. The aesthetic perspective of the artist who thought about art in a conceptual way rather than a visual approach is examined through the records from the early days of his art activities.
Rim Dong Sik (b.1945), a first-generation nature artist, turned to the outdoors to create the spontaneous ecosystem in Korea with his art in the 1980s, giving rise to the outdoor field art. The performative behavior of his work process included approaching and observing scenes from nature and daily life, then lingering in nater for a while, only to disappear without a trace. This world from his artwork, which remains in the archives, can lead us to an understanding of Rim's life and behavior towards nature.
Kim Tchah-Sup (1940~2022) had been examining various experimental trends in Korean contemporary art. He moved to New York City in 1974 and completed his etching work that expressed materials like rocks or triangles with fine lines. Subsequently, he explored diverse experiments on form and artistic methods through his work in paintings that utilized everyday objects such as paper cups and maps. The 124 books of notes left by the artist reveal the world of art that he constructed through deep conversations with himself. Through the archives, the artist's endless questions about universal truths such as the history of human civilizations, mathematical metaphors, and cultural identities and the process of exploring these show us the artist Kim Tchah-Sup, who established a unique art world of his own.
Press release courtesy Seoul Museum of Art | SeMA.
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