Tag: korea

Bohnchang Koo

Photography by Bohnchang Koo

Born into a prominent Korean family in 1953, Bohnchang Koo attended Yonsei University in Seoul, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Business, and began his life working in an office. Dissatisfied with this career, he moved to Hamburg, Germany, in 1980 to study design and photography. 

In 1985, Koo returned to Korea, taking up careers as a teacher and photographer with exhibitions in Germany, Iceland, Australia, Japan, Korea, and the United States. He was a professor at the Kaywon School of Art and Design, the Chung Ang University, Institute of the Arts in Seoul, and holds a visiting professorship at London’s Saint Martin School. Koo currently teaches at Kyungil University in Korea.

One of Bohnchang Koo’s latest work series is “The Allure of Blue”,  delicate photographs of porcelain pieces from the Joseon dynasty. Captivated by its charm, Koo began studying and photographing these traditional Korean ceramics fourteen years ago. After visiting sixteen museums throughout Korea, he compiled a body of work to highlight the simplistic beauty of Korea’s cultural heritage of that time.

Bohnchang Koo’s work can be found in several published collections which include the 2004 “Vessels for the Heart” and the 2006 “Deep Breath in Silence”, both published by Hangil Art,  and “Hysteric Nine”published in 2003 by Nobuhiko Kitamura.

Bohnchang Koo’s works have been exhibited in over thirty solo exhibitions including: Seoul’s Samsung Rodin Gallery in 2001, the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts in 2002, Paris’ 2004 Camera Obscura Exhibition, Kukje Gallery, the Goeun Museum of Photography in Busan in 2007, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2010, among others. His work can be seen at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, Paris’ Musee Guimet, Hamburg’s Museum of Art and Craft, Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Reykjavik Museum of Photography in Iceland.

Note:  The gallery images are from the March to April 2020 exhibition at the Choeunsook Gallery, a modern art and contemporary hand crafts exhibition space in Seoul, South Korea. The black and white images are from Bohnchang Koo’s photographic series “In the Beginning”, set in the landscape of modern Korea, which focuses on physical conflict and the frustration of things gained and things postponed. 

Ilhwa Kim

Ilhwa Kim, “Seed Paintings”, Hand Dyed Hanji Paper

Korean artist Ilhwa Kim hand-dyes, cuts, and rolls thousands of sheets of Korean mulberry paper to form colorful, three-dimensional works of art that form vibrant patterns and shapes. The artist developed this nearly sculptural way of creating artworks using layers of paper, which she calls “seeds,” to make the surface and sense of her images change from morning to night. Depending on the angle, distance and light situation, each of her pieces transforms in a constantly shifting wave of texture, dimensions, depth, and color while the viewer can spot subtle impressions of eyes, hearts, human figures, and more in the densely packed images.

Jaehyo Lee

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Sculptures by Jaehyo Lee

Since graduating in 1992 with a BFA from the Hong-Ik University Jaehyo Lee (1965, Hapchen, Korea) has gained acclaim both in his native Korea and internationally for his distinct yet intimately crafted oeuvre. Combining distinct traces of Land Art, Arte Povera and Minimalism Lee´s works cast a questioning eye over the roots of form, its function and its role within the natural world.

Do Ho Suh

Do Ho Suh, “Some/One”, Stainless Steel Military Dog Tags, Nickel-Plated Copper Sheets, Steel Structure, Glass Fiber Reinforced Resin, Rubber Sheets.

Do Ho Suh’s “Some/One” was installed in the Korean Pavilion at the 2001 Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy.

“Some/One” evolved from my first sculpture, “Metal Jacket”. I had a dream one day after I finished “Metal Jacket” that I wanted to turn it into some kind of larger installation. The dream was quite vivid. It was night, and I was outside a stadium, approaching it from the distance, and I saw a light in the stadium. So I thought, ‘There’s some kind of activity going on there.’ And as I approached, I started to hear clicking sounds, like the sound when metal pieces touch together. It was like there were thousands of crickets in the stadium. And then I entered the stadium.

I walked slowly, but I went into the stadium on the ground level. And then I saw this reflecting surface and I realized I was stepping on these metal pieces that were military dog tags. And they were vibrating slightly, vibrating and touching each other. The sound was from that. From afar I saw the central figure in the center of the stadium. It tried to go out of the stadium but it couldn’t because the train of its garment, which was made of dog tags, was just too big. It was just too big to pull all the dog tags.

So that was a dream and the image that I got. After that I made a small drawing about this vast field of military dog tags on the ground and a small figure in the center. Obviously I could not create the piece exactly as I dreamt it, but that was the kind of impact I wanted to create through that piece.” —Do Ho Suh

Jaehyo Lee

 

Sculptures and Furniture by Jaehyo Lee

Korean artist Jaehyo Lee creates sculptures and furniture pieces from metal and chopped wood. Yhese elements are bound together in such a way that the often-times linear building components become curved semi-geometric works of art.

Each piece crafted by Jaehyo Lee is both an engaging shape within a given space while also existing as an object with an inherently domestic purpose. The artist’s most recent exhibition, ‘Transformations’, is comprised of a series of useful art objects through which the artist has continued to actualize his exploration of the materiality of his chosen media.