korean beauty

8/6/2019 Korean Beauty

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M i n i s t r y o f C u l t u r e , S p o r t s a n d T o u r i s m

Kor

eanBeaut y

Korean Beauty



Korean Beauty



Contents Korean Beauty

4

Yeobaek 9

Chagyeong

49

Meot

89

Gyeopchim

129

Haehak

161

Yunghap

193

Korea Contemporary

234

Appendix241



4

Around the turn o the twentieth century, Westerners flocked

to Korea on hearing rumors that there was gold in the ground.

Although many ailed to find it and went home, they did not

regret the experience, because they knew, in the words o one

missionary, that “the gold lay not in the ground o Korea, but in

the hearts o the Korean people.”

In the secret o the gold that lies hidden in the heart, one o the

cryptic symbols on the treasure map is meot . And this book has

been made to help decode that symbol. The word meot may

sound strange i you are not Korean, but once you learn its

meaning, you will be able, like those Westerners o a century

ago, to dig out the precious gold that lies deep in the hearts o

the Korean people.

Actually, even native-born Koreans can rarely give a clear

answer i you ask them what meot is. They know that meot is

Korean Beauty

Lee O-Young



5

similar to mat (taste), and they know what has no mat and what

has no meot . But all you can do is to taste the meot or yoursel

in the uniquely Korean objects, customs, and behaviors that

appear in this book.

The beauty o Chinese ceramics lies in their substantial size

and mass, while Japanese ceramics are distinguished by colors

as brilliant as a red stingray. But with Korean celadon vases or

Joseon Dynasty porcelain “moon jars,” the beauty lies in the

gentle curves. Is it the beauty o the curve, then, that defines

Korean meot ? And even then, what is the beauty o the curve?

When driven by unction or efciency, human beings make a

straight line. That’s why most man-made objects are ormed o

straight lines, in contrast to the curved lines o nature. Whether

you see it with your eyes or eel it with your heart, a straight

thing is not natural.

In straight things there is no change or movement. Like direct

sunlight, a bald straight line has no shade. In a word, Koreans

would say that anything unctional, efcient, unnatural, and

bald has no meot . A ootpath has meot , but an expressway has no

meot .

In today’s parlance, meot is analog rather than digital. It has

something ambiguous and irregular about it. It cannot be



6

quantified in numbers or weighed in a scale. That’s why one

Japanese ceramics expert who loved Korean pottery said

that the beauty o Korean ceramics lay in “the presence o

regularity within irregularity and the flow o perection within

imperection,” or “regularity without irregularity is merely

mechanical, while irregularity without regularity is nothing

but chaos.” Thus, meot is born when regularity and irregularity

are in harmonious balance. The Japanese expert admitted that

Japanese ceramics “sometimes lose vitality through the habit o

seeking only perection.”

Here we can find another definition o meot . Japanese ceramics

have no meot . The reason why Korean ceramics have meot is that

they don’t lose their vitality.

Nowadays, the business people and tourists who come to Korea

are interested in the “Miracle on the Han River” that produced

the country’s successul industrialization. But i they spend a lot

o time with Koreans and encounter traditional Korean culture,

they may find, like their oreathers a century ago, that the real

gold o Korea lies not in the ground but in the hearts o the

people.

A tourist map is not enough. Let someone arriving in Korea

or the first time, or someone who has lived here or years,

or indeed someone who was born Korean, hold this book in



7

their hands; or when they do, I believe they may find that

mysterious and antastic Treasure Island, the land o meot .



88



Lee Joon

Yeobaek



9

One o the things that highlight the special character o Korean

artistic culture and the aesthetic values o East Asia, setting them

apart rom the artistic culture o the West, is the aesthetic o

yeobaek , the void. Chiefly used in discussing the mode o expression

in traditional East Asian pictures and landscape paintings, the term

“void” reers literally to the empty space or unpainted portion as

opposed to the objects depicted in the painting. By the standards

o Western art, which portrays everything as ar as possible by

its shape, the void in an East Asian painting might seem a space

that is unfinished or lacking in orm. Indeed, it is not easy to find

a corresponding term in the vocabulary o Western art. The only

equivalent is “blank space,” which suggests the negative element o

empty space and a deficiency in physical reproduction.

But in East Asian art theory, the void exists as a completed part

o the work, and might be termed in a more positive sense the

“unpainted painting.” In that sense, the void is not just unused

space, but an entity that exists even in its non-existence, and that

sublimates space to a higher plane. O course, the beauty o the

void is not unique to Korean art, but is shared by Chinese and

Japanese art as well. But while Chinese art shows a continental

orceulness and an aesthetic o solid orms, and Japanese art tendsto be decorative, delicate, and consummately artificial, Korean art

is characterized by eliminating the artificial as ar as possible and

producing the work in a natural manner as i it were simply there

rom the beginning.

Especially in Korean traditional paintings, the void is requently

used not only to evoke the proound spaces o natural objects

such as clouds, air, and sea, but also to show the allusive spirit

o the Joseon Dynasty literati artists. In Bitter Cold by the leading

late Joseon literati artist Kim Jeong-hui, the aesthetic o the void



10

appears with great elegance. Outside o the simple house standing

in the middle o the picture with pine and fir trees on either side,

the work omits virtually all background. Through the image o

the trees standing firm in the cold winter, and the completely

empty void, it admirably expresses the artist’s desolate mood

in his banishment to Jeju island, as well as the warm heart and

unswerving fidelity o the pupil who has not orgotten him.

Viewing the Geumgang Mountains rom Danbalryeong Pass by Jeong

Seon, who developed his own distinctive style o “true view”

landscape painting, depicts the wild scenery o the Geumgang

Mountains’ 12,000 peaks, which the artist had seen and elt or

himsel, but also reflects the legend that anyone who comes tothe Danbalryeong Pass will lose all attachment to worldly things.

Divided along the diagonal, the picture dramatically contrasts the

Geumgang Mountains, drawn like white crystals in the upper le

part o the rame, with the worldly people who have come here,

shown in dark ink to the lower right along with the Danbalryeong

Pass itsel, and thus it hints at the separate worlds o reality and

nirvana. The use o the void throughout the rame creates an aura

that gives the work a special power.

One o the articles in which the taste and sentiment o the Joseon

Dynasty appears to the ullest is the white porcelain jar. Known as

the “moon jar” rom its ull shape that resembles a ull moon, this

vessel has no decoration at all, yet it conveys a strong impression

to many people through its indierent and expressionless look.

With its so ull moon shape, its pliant lines, and its warm milky

coloring, it gives a natural and generous eeling. “Generous” here

is meant to imply various nuances o tolerant, accepting, ample,

leisurely, easy-going, and gentle—qualities that help explain why

the white porcelain “moon jar” has remained a avorite or so long.



11

Smooth and round and accepting all things naturally, the beauty

o the moon’s shape has nothing vulgar about it, but is ull o

elegance and dignity. In particular, the Joseon Dynasty moon jar

is epitomized by the limitless depth that comes rom the tranquil

silence o a broad void.

The use o the void and a contemplative attitude toward nature,

which we find so oen in Korean aesthetics o the past, is also

interestingly realized in the works o leading figures in twentieth-

century modern art such as Chang Uc-chin and Park Soo-keun.

In Chang Uc-chin’s A Riverside Scene, which makes maximum use

o the aesthetic o the void although produced by the techniques

o Western painting, we can read the eeling or elegant pursuitsand the comical ree spirit o an artist who lived without interest

in worldly success, while in Park Soo-keun’s Homecoming, the hard

lie o the common people is poetically sublimated through the

aesthetic o the void.

Since the 1970s, there have been many contemporary artists—such

as Lee Uan, Park Seo-bo, Suh Se-ok, and Lee Jong-sang—who

actively practiced the art o the void through minimal artistic acts.

One o Lee Uan’s most important works, From Line, shows thesimple act o drawing a line until the blue pigment in the end o

the brush is used up, and then continuously repeating that act. The

theory o Lee’s method is highly implicit and poetic: existing objects

are suggested by dots, living things by lines, and the appearance

and disappearance o these dots and lines implies birth and death,

while the repetition o this process evokes the infinite circulation o

the universe, which has no beginning or end.

Actually, this aesthetic o emptiness using the void was applied

in various ways by Western abstract artists o the mid-twentieth



12

century. Yves Klein, Mark Tobey, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Ad

Reinhardt, Agnes Martin, and many other Western artists reflected

Oriental philosophy and ideas such as meditation and Zen in

their works. But what is important to note is that long beore

Western abstract art, the concept o emptiness and the void was

very naturally ingrained in Korean tradition, culture, and refined

pursuits. Especially characteristic o Korean culture is its close

relationship with the East Asian concept o unity with nature or “not

two but one,” which seeks balance and harmony.

Kim Hong-joo’s Untitled which depicts the crater lake on Mt.

Baekdusan, leaves a large part o the painting as a void, implying

that it is equal in importance to the painted portion. The sharpcontrast between the precisely painted mountain peaks and the

completely unpainted lake calls orth a new eeling quite dierent

rom that o the landscape paintings or images o Mt. Baekdusan

that we have been accustomed to seeing. Suh Do-ho’s work that

reproduces part o the ront gate o his own traditional Korean

house in the orm o installation art, or Kim Sooja’s video work

that observes nature by watching the slow movement o a river in

contrast to the ast flow o change in contemporary society, is also

dierentiated rom the work o Western artists by an observant wayo using the void.

This aesthetic o the void also appears clearly in the photography

o Bae Bien-U and Boomoon, both receiving much attention

internationally. Bae Bien-U mostly captures natural landscapes in

the dense mist o dawn against a background o pine trees, creating

a scene o lingering monotones like the void in a traditional ink

painting. The photographs o Boomoon show natural landscapes

centered on the horizon where the sky meets the land or sea,

reproducing real spaces—white snowy fields—as the white void



13

in which nothing is painted, and thus hinting that there is no real

separation between the visible and the invisible.

Thus, the character o the void is that it has no shape or boundaries,

and is not something that can be touched, seen, or easily defined

in words. Yet through the relationship between seen and unseen,

material and spiritual, sel and other, interior and exterior, or center

and periphery, it is continually expanding, orming new meanings,

and producing diverse eects. A space in which a kind o energy

resides, it is something invisible yet apparent to the eye, something

that can be analyzed but that must be grasped through bodily

eeling. Clearly showing the aesthetic character and spiritual values

o Korean art, the aesthetic o the void retains its place in manyorms o Korean artistic culture to this day.



14

Kim Jeong-hui, Bitter Cold



15



16

Chang Uc-chin, A Riverside Scene



17



18

Park Soo-keun, Homecoming



19



20

Bottle, White Porcelain with Rope Design in Underglaze Iron-Brown



21



22

Kim Chong-yung, Work 58-3



23



24

Bae Bien-U, Pine Tree Series



25



26



27

Suh Do-ho, Gate



28

Jeong Seon, Viewing the Geumgang Mountains rom Danbalryeong Pass



29



30



31

Kim Hong-joo, Untitled



32

Lee Uan, Correspondance



33



34

Boomoon, Naksan No. 8167, No. 8168



35



36

Kim Sooja, A Laundry Woman – Yamuna River, India



37



38

Lee Uan, From Line



39



40



41

Suh Se-ok, Dancers



42

Moon Jar



43



44

Koo Bohnchang, Vessel (HA 05-1)



45



46



47

Cheong Kwang-ho, The Pot 79



48



Kim Bong-ryol

Chagyeong



49

The monotonous scenery o the coast, or amiliar everyday city

scenes, can take on a new beauty when we look at them through

the viewfinder o a camera. The scene in the viewfinder is one

that already existed, but through subjective human choice it is

cropped into a picture, and in this picture there is already aesthetic

value. The landscape painters o eighteenth-century Europe used

this principle to develop the genre o the “picturesque” painting,

while Asian architects and artisans have realized the same principle

in gardens and buildings.

Traditional Asian architecture and landscape gardening was

a process o finding and showing the orms that lay hidden in

nature. In creating a garden, two important principles were, first,an exquisite correspondence (ingyeong) with the shapes and

topography o nature, and second, the bringing out (chagyeong)

o the intrinsic orms in the natural interior and exterior views.

So the first thing to do was to read the lie o the land around

the garden, and to choose among the views that spread out

beore you.

Korea’s topography has been described as wrinkly. Between lines

o mountains not particularly tall, rivers and streams flow throughvalleys large and small. The mountains are gently sloped and

thickly wooded, with small hills close to the villages and larger

mountains urther away, orming a landscape o overlapping

layers. As a result, when you open a window in a house, in any

direction you can see a scene o mountains, fields, and rivers. So

even without making a garden, the window acts like the viewfinder

o a camera, orming a beautiul natural landscape rom the

surroundings. The topography o the Korean peninsula was a

great gi to Korean architecture. It presented the simplest way o

applying the principle o hagyeong



0

In the gazebos and pavilions deliberately constructed or the

enjoyment o natural scenery, the chagyeong method is extended

even urther. The Mandaeru Pavilion o the Byeongsan Seowon

Conucian Academy in Andong is a completely empty two-storey

building comprising seven bays (kan, the area enclosed by our

structural columns). When you climb to the pavilion and look out,

the Nakdong River flows peaceully below, with Mt. Byeongsan

stretching out above. The name “Byeongsan” suggests a mountain

that resembles a olding screen ( yeongpung) painted with pictures

divided into multiple panels. Mandaeru is a building ormed o

nothing but a rame, its columns standing bare without any walls.

The space rom le to right between the columns, and rom top to

bottom between the eaves and the floor, orms an enormous emptypicture rame. This architectural rame is filled with the scenery o

mountains and rivers, and the rames o the seven bays extend to

present the views o the long river and mountain as both divided

and continuous. Thus the pavilion becomes a olding screen

adorned with seven landscape paintings.

The method o using the building as a visual rame or the

landscape outside has oen been used in contemporary

architecture too. When architect Bae Byung-kil designed GalleryHyundai, he deliberately pierced the açade o the building

with windows. In general, art gallery buildings avoid windows

because the direct rays o the sun can hinder the preservation and

appreciation o the art works. Nevertheless, this building was

iven windows to provide views o the old palace across the road.

Seen through the rame-like windows o the gallery, the palace is

no longer a relic but a series o works o art.

Welcomm City, Seoul, designed by leading Korean architect Seung

H-Sang, is an example o a structure that uses whole buildings as



51

a visual rame. The headquarters o an advertising company, it is

ormed o our separate buildings. The complex is not very large,

but the reason or dividing the buildings was to leave an empty

space between them so that the views o the neighborhood in

ront and behind would be visible rom each building. What this

architect calls the “urban void” is rearranging the landscape o

the city.

Gardens around the world are designed to present an idealized

image o nature. The English picturesque garden re-created

pastoral scenes o the countryside, while the arabesque garden o

the Islamic world evoked a lush oasis amid the desert. A Korean

garden, on the other hand, had no need to reproduce the orms o nature by artificial means. As you only had to raise your eyes to

see rich and beautiul nature all around you, nature itsel became

a garden simply by the choice o a view. The goal o the Korean

garden was to maximize the intrinsic beauty o nature with the

minimum o artificial intererence. Even i it was created artificially,

the principle o landscaping was not to let the artifice appear but to

make the garden look as i it had been created by nature in the first

place. This might be called the epitome o the static view o nature,

which respects nature just as it is.

Accordingly, artificial behavior that goes against the principles o

nature was rowned on. As it was in the nature o water to flow

rom high to low, they did not make ountains that shoot water

upward. Nor did they artificially change the topography. Where

there was a slope, they built embankments to suit the slope and

orm step-like terraces, and where the land was level, they built

walls to orm a space suited to level land.

Some buildings became completely part o nature. Gaeamsa



2

Temple in Buan is a very small temple. When it was rebuilt in

the seventeenth century, the whole country was in ruins aer

the Japanese invasions, and there were no economic resources

or rebuilding a temple on a large scale. There was only enough

money to build a very small Buddha Hall o only three bays. A site

or the building was chosen below a mountain with two imposing

boulders on its summit. The little building looked like another

boulder that had rolled down rom the hill behind, completely

becoming a part o the natural scene. When you stand in ront o

this Buddha Hall, you can’t help exclaiming in admiration at the

magnificent scenery, but it is hard to tell whether the object o that

admiration is nature or the man-made building.

Similarly, the Education Center or Unification in Seoul, designed

by contemporary architect Kim Won, stands within the Bukhansan

National Park. This architect made the shape o the buildings

resemble the surrounding jagged mountain peaks. The buildings

themselves became artificial mountains, orming a new part

o nature.

Nature is also a temporal being that changes with night and day

and the changing seasons. Thereore, the principle o chagyeongmust also accept the changes o time. For garden trees, broad-leaed

trees that reflected the our seasons were preerred to evergreens

and coniers, and they were not planted in straight lines. Koreans

would enjoy the new green shoots in spring, rest under the thick

shade o the leaves in summer, admire the beautiul changing

colors in autumn, and contemplate the snow resting on the bare

branches in winter.

Natural landscapes are not only to be seen with the eye, but also

heard with the ear. Sounds o water, sounds o the wind, sounds



53

o rain drops, sounds o birds... all these are sounds that make one

eel the presence o nature. The Soswaewon Garden in Damyang

is a sonic garden where you can hear all these sounds. When you

enter through a dense bamboo grove, you hear the wind rustling

in the bamboo leaves, and throughout the garden, which centers

on a stream, you hear diverse sounds o water: the calm sound o

flowing water, the powerul sound o alling water...

I you look careully, you can see that the bamboo stems have been

planted close together to ampliy the sound o the wind by rubbing

against each other. You can also read that the rocky floor o the

stream was deliberately made uneven to maximize the sound o

flowing water. The sounds in this garden have all been artificiallyselected and adjusted, but it is difcult to detect any artificiality.

Instead, you have the illusion that the garden has been created

amid natural sounds that were already there.

Nature is both a visual and an aural being, a being that embodies

the changes o time. Consequently, chagyeong is not just a way

o perpetuating the scenes that appear to the eye, but also o

capturing the sounds perceived by the ear. One must also be

able to eel in one’s whole body the changes o time and theseasons, and the accumulation o ages. Korean architecture and

landscape gardening has developed on a principle o chagyeong that

comprehensively shows landscape, sound, and time. As a result, it

has put architecture and humanity at one with nature.



54

Kim Su-cheol, Summer Landscape



55



56



57



58

Mandaeru Pavilion o Byeongsan Seowon Conucian Academy (Previous pages)

Seung H-Sang , Welcomm City, Seoul



59



60

Jeong Seon , The Inner Geumgang Mountains (an)



61



62

Kim Won , Education Center or Unification (Le)

Gaeamsa Temple (Right)



63



64



65



66



67

Ahn Jong-yuen , Gwang Pung Je Wol (Previous pages)

Choi Tae-hoon , Skin o Time



68

Jung Yeon-doo , Location No. 8



69



70

Soswaewon Garden in Damyang



71



72



73

Won Seong-won , Dreamroom – Michalis



74

Buyongji Pond at Changdeokgung Palace



75



76

Buyongji Pond at Changdeokgung Palace



77



78

Kim Chang-kyum , Watershadow – Four Seasons



79



80

Lee Hun-chung , See Nature in the Space



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82



83

Kim Hee-soo, Rear Window No. 3



84

Yoo Seung-ho , Rear Window



85



86



87

Lee Myong-ho , Tree No. 2



88



Ahn Sang-soo

Meot



89

It is hard to express meot in a single word.

Because it is a word that exists only in Korean,

it cannot be ully translated into another language.

The sensitive instinct to eel meot is

engraved as a beautiul design in our genes.

The realm that embraces meot is extremely broad.

I there is lavish meot , there is also plain and tidy meot .

I there is stylish and sophisticated meot , there is also humble meot

There is smart meot , and there is quiet, unaected meot .

There is elegant and luxurious meot ,

and there is childlike or countrified meot .There is refined meot and youthul meot ,

masculine meot and eminine meot .

Meot shines out when the uniqueness o one thing resonates with many.

When this resonance is missing, we sense a certain awkwardness.

Awkwardness is precisely the absence o meot .

Meot is resonance.

Following someone else cannot be called meot . Meot resides in uniqueness.

It is the thrilling, breath-taking moment in the Monk’s Dance

when the robes rise into the air and time seems briefly to stand still.



90

It is also the moment when the dancer’s art,

engrained into her body by an accumulation o time and sweat,

shows its own meot in the toe o the white sock

that hides barely visible at the hem o her skirt.

This might be called meot on a high level.

Meot has two aces.

The beauty o contradiction lies in meot .

Enlivening yet tranquil, lean yet rich,

unny yet sad, loose yet sharp,

empty yet ull,

meot includes both extremes.

That’s whymeot transcends dierent levels.

It goes into a level, and then comes out again.

It reaches a stage with meot on a high level.

Meot exists alongside mat .

Mat and meot orm a pair.

Meot is deep and not easily seen,

while mat is so direct that you can eel it in your skin.

I meot is the moon, mat is the sun.

Meot is a refined pursuit.

The beauty o meot lies in a flow, in riding on a flow.

When there is meot you seem to eel an energy,

something living, with blood circulating.

Long ago,

One spring, beside the Seomjin River, a green old man spoke:

This is the Toad Ferry.

I the beautiul daughter o Hanga floats by,

a moonlight bridge will be placed across this river, and a moonlight erry will appear.

How can you soothe the spring ever o apricot blossoms?

Behind that old man, I elt the meot o his poetic inspiration.

When he dies, that meot will die with him.



91

Like the grain o wood, o flesh, o breath, o water, or o the wind,

meot also seems to have a grain.

The grain o meot is the trace le by the flow o

the heart and spirit in many layers.

Oh, my.

There is meot ,

it has meot ,

I eel meot .

Meot is ully absorbed in our lives.

Meot is the essence o Korean beauty.

The finest o the good and beautiul emotions that we eel:that is meot .



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94

Digilog Samulnori: The Dead Tree Blooms



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96

Jo Hui-ryong , Plum Blossoms



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98

Ahn Sang-soo , Hangeul Ivy



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100



101

Han Sung-pil , How to Lie with SPACE – The Ivy Space



102

Hwang Doo-jin , Chuijukdang (Le)

Kim Kai-chun, Damdamwon (Right)



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104

Yi Hyeong-nok , Bookshel and Various Utensils



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106

Document Chest



107



108

Bae Se-hwa , Steam_11 (Le)

Kwon Jae-min, Grow Up the Light-table (Right)



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110

Choi Byung-hoon , Aferimage 07-244



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112



113



114

Kang Ik-joong , World Expo Shanghai 2010, Korea Pavilion (Previous pages)

Min Byung-geol , 3x3cm Movable Wooden Type Exhibition



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116

Shin Yun-bok , Beautiul Woman



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118

Norigae



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120



121

Pillows



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Yugi (Forged Brass Tableware)



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124

Baekjegeumdong Daehyangno



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126

Pensive Bodhisattva (Le)

Seosan Maae Samjon Bulsang (Right)



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128



Yim Seock-jae

Gyeopchim



129

Gyeopchim, jungcheop, overlapping—these words express the same

meaning in Korean, Chinese, and English. But let’s consider their

requency o use. Gyeopchim and jungcheop are common words in

Korean. In English, “overlapping” is not considered a difcult word,

but it is not used very requently. This is because o dierences in

national character, culture, values, and liestyle.

Korean culture is certainly ond o overlapping and uses it a lot. To

begin with, this happens in speech. Korean oen has ten or more

adjectives to reer to the same quality. While sharing the same basic

meaning, they express the subtle distinctions that Koreans like to

find in the specific ways that this basic quality appears in dierent

situations. This is the aesthetic o overlapping.

In this, writing is no dierent rom speech. Take a look at the

Korean alphabet, hangeul . In all the world’s languages, there are not

many that orm syllables by combining the alphabetic elements in

both vertical and horizontal directions, as hangeul does. Compare

this to the way English or Japanese lines up the letters in a single

direction, and you can easily see how a spatial concept has been

added to language in an aesthetic o overlapping. It’s the same

when the syllable ends with two final consonants rather than one.To pronounce these, the position o the tongue inside the mouth

must “overlap.”

Finally, let’s consider styles o speech. In Korean, i you say plainly,

“I can’t,” it sounds not just rude but aggressive. The most common

way o reusing a request is to say, “I guess it will be difcult.” This is

because o the national dislike o cutting anything o definitively,

and in a broad sense this too belongs to the concept o overlapping.

Why is this? Let’s take a look at the natural environment. Korea’s



130

topography is mountainous, but except in certain areas, the

mountains are not very rugged. The easiest kind o natural

landscape to find in Korea is one o mountain ridges, neither high

nor steep, spreading out in overlapping layers. The close mountains

look darker and the distant mountains lighter, as i they were

ormed rom overlapping layers o cellophane. When people saw

this, they must have wanted to be like that too.

This was true not only o the natural environment, but also

ideologically. The Buddhist concept o “not two but one” is a typical

example. It teaches that the concept o binary distinctions or pairs,

which we understand as an important attribute o things and o

lie, is actually no more than a useless dierentiation produced byhuman greed—an apparition created by the mind itsel in order to

have only good things, and on that basis to have more possessions.

This is a warning against the spirit o dierentiation; but in the

everyday world, it must have been hard to ollow the teachings o

Buddhism like a virtuous priest and understand the attributes o all

things as one, and the solution that was ound was “overlapping.”

Because they wanted to be like the natural environment, and had

a religious teaching that supported this aim, Koreans were able toreflect the aesthetic o overlapping in many aspects o their culture

and liestyle. This was equally true in clothing, ood, and shelter.

First let’s look at architecture. In traditional Korean architecture

there are no megalithic structures. Rather than constructing a single

large building, the main method was to divide the whole into many

parts and combine them by lining them up rom ront to back or

rom le to right. In a mountain temple, a succession o gates are

placed along the line o the ridge to orm a continuous space. The

areas beore and behind each gate take on a dierent meaning, and



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the gate perorms the role o overlapping between the two realms.

It teaches us that, just as the Buddha Hall seems to spread out a

transparent membrane when we stand beore the main temple,

there is no need to make a rigid distinction between the mundane

world outside and the world o nirvana within. From this alone, we

may eel that enlightenment is not the end o sel-cultivation, but

that urther training is needed to remain enlightened.

It’s the same with palace buildings. Although described as

“nine-layered palaces,” they still must communicate with the

outside world through a series o domains that overlap correctly

through the medium o gates. Outside the Geunjeongjeon Hall

at Gyeongbokgung Palace, the space is overlapped by as manyas three gates (named, in order, Gwanghwamun, Heungnyemun,

and Geunjeongmun), creating a suitably dignified space or the

audience hall o the royal palace. Rather than simply making the

building itsel very large, the architect calculated on giving the

space an atmosphere through an aesthetic o overlapping that was

elt in the process o entering.

But the epitome o overlapping in a palace is the roo. The reason

why the roo is made so visible to the outside is to show distinctionso rank according to the principle that customs dierentiate classes

in an era o despotic rule, but the result is that it creates a scene

o innumerable overlapping roos. From the roos alone, it would

appear that even in the palace they were less concerned with rank

than with living intimately together, and this means that ultimately,

in their lives together, people were never ree rom Korean-style

subjectivism—that is, rom the philosophy o overlapping.

This is even more true o Korean tiled houses. In placing their

bets on space, one o the things that Korean builders considered



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the ultimate betting place was the aesthetic o overlapping, and

without question this reached its highest level in the Korean-

style tiled house. Specialists in these houses commonly say that a

100m2 house is a large one, meaning that the actual floor space is

not as large as it appears rom the outside. Why is this? To overlap

the space. A space is cleared to orm a yard “as empty as a hollow

rice pu” in which the actual house is a single-layer space just one

room deep, dividing and crossing between the two sides o the

yard. The room has a yard at both ront and back, and rom the

perspective o the yard, the house and the room overlap.

Why was this done? It was a clever way o distinguishing

separate domains while allowing or a variety o indirect meanso communication in the extended amily system. It was a clever

way o using sunlight and wind to make the house warm in winter

and cool in summer. It was a clever way o using the windows as

picture rames to create an eect o varied landscapes, so that the

occupants could always enjoy the pleasure o living with dozens o

pictures around them. The decision whether to divide spaces into

separate parts or overlap them is a very important ork in the road,

and in their sense o orm Koreans chose the path o overlapping.

They chose it because, when they compared the strengths andweaknesses o the two methods, they judged that overlapping

created spaces that were much more healthy or people in body

and mind.

In the whole sphere o clothing, ood, and shelter, the aesthetic o

overlapping is epitomized by the Korean dish bibimbap (boiled rice

mixed with vegetables and other ingredients). Using an aesthetic

o mixtures created unexpectedly rom diverse ingredients, this

is a case where overlapping has matured so thoroughly that it

has developed into mixing. When a wide range o ingredients



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are mixed together, the taste, smell, color, nutritional content,

and other properties o each one create a chemical reaction that

produces an unpredictable result. The intention is not to make

something appear entirely as planned, decided, and expected by

human beings. In making bibimbap no one worries about their

culinary skills. There may be master ches o spaghetti, but I have

never heard o a master che o bibimbap. That’s because just by

putting in this and that and mixing them, the flavor emerges by

itsel as the elements produced by each ingredient overlap. There

is no way to measure whether one cook’s bibimbap is better than

another’s. Bibimbap is a dish without a special cooking method, and

this is possible because o a delicate sense o taste that knows how

to accept and enjoy the subtle dierences that appear each time itis made. The Korean mind itsel, accepting that each version is tasty

in its own way, is surely the highest level o “overlapping.”

By the standards o Western or Japanese rationalism, absolutism,

or individualism, the aesthetic o overlapping may seem vague

or irrational. But the greatest strong point in the aesthetic o

overlapping is its economy. To maintain an exclusive dichotomy

takes tremendous energy. How can you divide things in two and

then keep on living with just one side? Thousands o times youwould be bound to wonder i you had made the right choice,

and you would have to be as stubborn as an ox to stick to the

distinction you had established. Truly you would need great energy

to keep this up. One way to ease this eort is the aesthetic o

overlapping. Lie may be meaningless and the circumstances that

surround us are constantly changing, but living in accordance with

those circumstances is a way to get hurt less in mind and body.



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Donggwoldo



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Back Garden o Nakseonjae viewed rom Chwiunjeong Pavilion



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Choi Jeong-hwa , Guns, Germs, and Steel (Previous pages)

Lee Sea-hyun , Between Red – 99



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Irodang House at Unhyeongung Palace



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Ahn Kyu-chul , Other People’s Rooms (Previous pages)

Koh Myung-keun , Building – 28



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Jogakbo (Patchwork Wrapping-cloth) (Le)

Chae Eun-mi, Gold Light Silhouette – Crystal 2 (Right)



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Shin Sang-ho, Language



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Lacquered Box Inlaid with Mother-o-Pearl



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Han Ki-chang, The Garden o Roentgen



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Han Ki-chang, The Garden o Roentgen



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Bibimbap



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Choi Joon-sik

Haehak



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The aesthetic sense embodied in Korean traditional arts is as

diverse as Korea’s history is long, and is very difcult to summarize

briefly. But i there is something that stands out particularly

in contrast to the artistic aesthetics o other countries, it might

be called an aesthetic o pagyeok —iconoclasm—or an aesthetic

o haehak —humor—that maniests itsel in such concepts as

asymmetry, spontaneity, and ree spirit. Koreans seem to be born

with an instinctive resistance to any strictly imposed system o

order. This is even more apparent in comparison with the art o

China and Japan, which otherwise belong to the same cultural

region.

The most amiliar example is palace architecture. The palaces o Korea, or more precisely o its last dynasty the Joseon (1392–1910),

were modeled on those o China. But o the five palaces that

currently survive in Seoul, only the first, Gyeongbokgung, ollows

the Chinese pattern, while the other our were reely designed.

Chinese palaces, as can be seen rom the example o the Forbidden

City, were built strictly along a single axis rom the first gate

through the main audience hall to the final gate, and even the

associated buildings were arranged symmetrically around this axis.

The only palace o Joseon built on this plan is Gyeongbokgung.Starting rom the second palace, Changdeokgung (listed by

UNESCO as a World Heritage Site), the other palaces ignore this

principle completely. To be precise, Changdeokgung is built along

three distinct axes, while its ancillary buildings are ar rom

symmetrically arranged. In this way, Koreans ollowed Chinese

models in external appearance, but remained aithul to Korean

spontaneity in the actual content.

There are so many examples like this that a whole book would

not be enough to describe them, but here we will just mention



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some important examples rom each genre. In music and dance,

the iconoclastic or spontaneous spirit o Koreans appears in

improvisation. The improvisatory element in Korean traditional

music is so strong that at times it can seem like caprice. One o the

important orms o Korean olk music is sinawi an ensemble in

which only the rhythmic ramework is fixed and the whole piece

unolds through improvisation. Right rom the beginning, it simply

starts without any pre-arranged plan. So there is no “correct” way to

play. I the musicians are well attuned to each other while playing,

a harmonious sound will emerge. But even then, it is not likely to

last long, because each musician plays according to his or her own

taste. That’s why sinawi is known as music that only the greatest

masters can play.

This spontaneity tends to shade into caprice, the most dramatic

example being one relating to Sim Sang-geon, whose name was

widely known until the 1960s as a great gayageu zither player. A

student who took lessons rom him stayed up all night memorizing

the music Sim played, and the next day perormed it identically.

But Sim denied that he had ever played that music. The next day,

the same thing happened again. In readiness, the student recorded

Sim’s playing, then played it back to him the next day, insisting thatthe student was playing just as Sim had done. But Sim’s answer was

enough to end the argument. “That’s yesterday’s music, not what

I’m playing today.” To him, music was something that should be

dierent every time you play it.

Korean traditional dance makes a sharp contrast with Western

dance orms such as ballet. Ballet is an art o beautiully realizing

a fixed set o pre-determined movements. As a result, it bears

little relation to the mental state o the dancer. Korean dancers,

on the other hand, are less concerned with how their dancing will



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look on the outside, than with how best to express their eelings

through dance. As a result, Korean dance has no fixed movements.

The dancers perorm their dance spontaneously, according to

the eeling o the moment, and the better they do this, the better

they are said to dance. Thus Korean dance, too, is always dierent

according to the circumstances.

Art is no exception, either. The art orm in which the Korean sense

o humor is most ully developed is olk painting. Within this genre,

best known are the paintings o tigers. The tigers in these pictures

look so cute that they seem closer to cats. Yet obviously a tiger is

a tiger. I wonder how many o the world’s peoples portray tigers

in such a comical way. But the Korean olk artist’s way o paintingtigers was not just comical: it was also iconoclastic. Let’s take an

example. Tiger and Pine Tree by the leading Joseon artist Kim Hong-

do is perhaps the most perect portrait o a tiger in all Korean art

history. Every hair o the tiger’s ur seems alive. The olk paintings

that imitate this picture are very crude in execution, but they are

also very comical and iconoclastic. The humor is in the tiger’s ace

or the overall composition, while the iconoclasm is in a painting

technique reminiscent o European cubism. What makes the tiger’s

body look strange is that one part is painted as it would look romthe ront, and another part as it would look rom the side. These

paintings are realizations o the highly iconoclastic idea that a

picture need not be painted strictly rom a single viewpoint.

It’s the same way with ceramics. Among these, the porcelain vessels

known as “moon jars” embody this concept best. Moon jars were

much prized by the Joseon aristocracy or their asymmetrical

and iconoclastic appearance. But not content with that, they

also painted highly comical tigers on the surace o the jars. Thus

comedy and iconoclasm were combined in a single object. This



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tendency can also be ound in another type o ceramic vessel, the

buncheong bottle. Buncheong ceramics look even more spontaneous

and appealing than Joseon Dynasty porcelain. Not only is their

shape unconventional, but the pictures painted on their suraces

are unbelievably comical. The most characteristic example has

a painting o a fish floating upside down as i dead on the top o

the vessel, but ar rom being grim, the fish looks comical, with its

mouth open in a smile.

Finally let’s turn to iconoclasm in architecture. In the Manseru

Pavilion at Seonunsa Temple, all the crossbeams are bent. Scholars

o architecture say that these bent beams were used because they

were structurally superior, but i so, there is no way to explain whybeams like these are not ound in Chinese and Japanese buildings.

Instead, we must see this as a reflection o the Korean people’s

distinctive aesthetic sense, an aesthetic sense that disliked anything

symmetrical, perect, or smooth. The walls o the Daeungjeon Hall

at Cheongnyongsa Temple are even more dramatic. Not a single

column is straight; indeed the columns are so bent that they look

as i they have been distorted by a computer graphics program. The

builders surely could have used straight timbers or applied some

process to straighten the warped ones, but they chose to use theoriginal wood virtually untouched.

That’s how coarse and crude Koreans are. Wood was not the only

thing they used in this way. Even the oundation stones beneath

the columns were brought and used in their natural state, without

shaping. The lower part o the column was carved to fit the rough

stone and then simply erected on top o it. This is iconoclasm on

iconoclasm. That’s why Korean art has not been very popular with

Western people, who are so thoroughly accustomed to artificial

things. Instead, Westerners applaud the art o Japan. But it should



165

not be orgotten that among Japanese intellectuals there are many

who admire this Korean aesthetic.



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Masks



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Bongsan Talchum (Le)

Noridan (Right)



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Gwon Osang , Red Sun



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Kim Deuk-sin , Cat Snatching a Chick



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Lee Joong-keun , Catch Me I You Can (Le)

Kwon Ki-soo , Lie (Right)



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Kim Hong-do, Kang Se-hwang , Tiger and Pine Tree (Le)

White Porcelain Jar with Magpie and Tiger Design in Cobalt Blue Underglaze (Right)



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Buncheong Bottle with Incised Fish Design



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Jang Seung-hyo , Laputa (Previous pages)

Yoo Seung-ho , Pu-ha



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Sung Dong-hoon , Singing Tree



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Cheongnyongsa Temple Daeungjeon Hall (Le)

Crossbeams o Manseru Hall, Seonunsa Temple (Right)



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Lee Ji-yen , Stars Twinkle in the Sky



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Yi Hwan-kwon , Jangdokdae



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Lee Dae-hyung

Yunghap



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“At last the bell is made. Its appearance is as loy as a mountain,

and its sound is like a dragon’s call that resounds to the ends o the

earth and even penetrates into the ground. May the beholder eel

a sense o wonder, and the hearer receive good ortune.” (From the

inscription on the Sacred Bell o the Great King Seongdeok,

r. 702–737.)

Born o the desire to overcome a time o chaos and open a new

and united age, Seongdeokdaewang-sinjong (the Sacred Bell o

the Great King Seongdeok) is a symbol o communication and

unity. The clear and uniorm resonance o a temple bell was the

finest sound in the East, resounding ar and wide in all directions.

To recreate that pure, deep sound, 3088 speakers were broughttogether. Hyeongyeon by Han Won-suk was an ambitious attempt

to revive the dormant resonance o King Seongdeok’s bell through

modern technology and artistic imagination, using the combined

orces o sound amplification, electrical engineering, architectural

engineering, and artistic direction to reproduce the shape o

the bell ull-size. But despite employing all the most advanced

science and technology, that historic resonance could not be

recreated accurately.

King Seongdeok’s bell is a good example to show the value o

yunghap or usion that lies hidden in Korean culture. This goes

beyond a physical or chemical mixing o related fields, and is a

kind o cultural and imaginative sympathy or communication that

promotes harmony and reconciliation. To create a positive energy

out o the conflict between dissimilar things and heterogeneous

values, it does not make them become a single body by orce.

Instead, the important point is that it provides a space where

dierent kinds can meet and communicate reely. Within

that space, Korean artists have been able to create a variety o



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rather than just a consumer o media, technology, and global

trends. This created a sense o pride that enabled Koreans to

compare Korean things and Western things on equal terms, to

ridicule the excessive flunkeyism that had taken deep root in the

wake o modernization, and to reflect on themselves. This sense

o pride also provided the strength to experiment with hybrid

cultural codes through diverse visual languages. With user-created

contents, it became easy to exchange images and videos. Cyworld,

blogs, Facebook, and Twitter expanded the collective intelligence

available to support changeability and plurality o values instead

o submitting to the rules, rameworks, and distortions imposed

by the media giants. But they still could not overcome the time lag

between the cyberspace that advocated disparate combinations andvoices rom the margins and the reality that could not keep up with

that pace. More precisely, the popular voice that recognized this

time lag and limitation became louder, and expectations became

correspondingly higher. It was like a kind o labor pain as “Koreans

within Korea” were reborn as “Koreans within the world” or the

“Global I.” At last they had attained the cultural confidence to bring

out a new usion without losing their identity.

A creative usion is premised on an open platorm that embracesdiversity, reedom o expression, the breaking down o boundaries,

and global networks. To young Koreans, who are accustomed

to such terms as nomadism, diaspora, hybrid, and media

convergence, a fixed view through a static window has become

unamiliar. Instead, they are used to seeing the view through a

car window, passing rapidly by them. They like to look through

about ten windows at the same time or news, email, Cyworld,

music channels, and YouTube. This phenomenon creates an ideal

environment or artists. As a representative example, multi-media

artists such as Choe U-Ram, Debbie Han, Jeon Joon-ho, and Lee



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Yong-baek have developed an iconoclastic visual language to

address issues o technology etishism, distorted cultural identity,

and the corrupted ideology o capitalist society.

Choe U-Ram uses art and science to produce mechanical creatures

whose harsh and shocking orms express a message o criticism and

warning about contemporary society’s increasing subordination to

machines. Inspired by natural phenomena such as fish, moonlight,

or wind, the narrative o how these mechanical creatures breathe,

photosynthesize, and breed, oretells a none-too-distant uture

when human beings will worship technology instead o God.

Debbie Han poses the rather preposterous question “Where is yourVenus?” by making a Venus with thick lips, a slant-eyed Venus, or a

Venus with a hooked nose, all out o green celadon pottery. That is

how Korea looks to Han, an artist who has returned to Korea rom

America. Highlighting the contradiction between having a Korean

body and aspiring to Western beauty, Han breaks down boundaries

between ideal and reality, West and East, beauty and ugliness. She

questions an abstract and relativistic definition o the beauty that

lies hidden in the ambiguity and uncertain identity produced by a

hybrid o dissimilar components.

Jeon Joon-ho satirizes the current situation in which the flow o

money creates class distinctions and divisions, just as ideology

divided people and made them suspicious o each other in

the Cold War era. Walking around among animated banknotes

o 1000, 5000, or 10000 Korean Won, we pass historic sites like

Gyeonghoeru Pavilion, Ojukheon House, and Dosanseowon

Conucian Academy, but no one pays attention to their cultural

value. All that matters is monetary value as indicated by the

number o “0”s. This is a work that gives an insight into the



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illusoriness o the virtual world created by human desire, ideology,

and capital.

Alluding to a sculpture o the Virgin Mary lamenting with Jesus in

her arms, Lee Yong-baek's plastic sculpture Pieta is a good example

o a work that conveys a symbolic message o harmony. Only on

close examination does it become apparent that the two figures,

reminiscent o a uturistic cyborg, are actually one. The Virgin Mary

takes the role o a mold, and Jesus a figure cast in the mold: one

is the seed and the other is the skin that gave birth to the seed. As

the concept o “two” ultimately originated in the concept o “one,”

distinctions between mother and son, God and man, lie and death,

or original and replica become meaningless.

All these artists stress that art and politics, economy, science,

and cultural issues can only attain their true value through

communication and empathy rather than isolation. They are well

aware that iconoclasm without a usion o dissimilar elements

can easily make itsel an isolated island. Only when it has room

to accept the exotic, look to the margins, and communicate with

the world, can it become the oundation or creating cultural and

spiritual heritage that will spread ar and wide—just as the SacredBell o the Great King Seongdeok united people’s hearts with its

gentle resonance.

Transcending physical usion, chemical usion, and economic

usion, a spiritual usion can be observed in many places. I hope

the various usions created by Korean artists, who know how to be

honest with themselves and to listen to the world, will both amaze

the world with their iconoclastic originality, and become part o a

history shared with the world.



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Seongdeokdaewang-sinjong



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Han Won-suk, Hyeongyeon



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Ceiling Structure o Soyojeong Pavilion



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Nam June Paik, The More the Better (Previous pages)

Dabotap



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Choe U-Ram, Una Lumino (Anmopispl Avearium Cirripedia URAM) (Le)

Yee Soo-kyung, Translated Vase (Right)



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Munjado



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Hong Ji-yoon, Minstrel, Romance, and Fantasy at Wonhyoro and Cheongpadong



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Kim Joon, Bird Land – Chrysler (Previous pages)

Jeong Seon, The Geumgang Mountains



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Kim Yoon-jae, Missing Geumgang Mountains Series 2



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Lee Lee-nam, New Geumgang Jendo



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Jeon Joon-ho, BooYooHaDa 4



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Kim Hong-do, The Washing Place, rom 25-lea Album o Genre Paintings by Kim Hong-do



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Debbie Han, Seated Three Graces



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Lee Young-mi, Between Dream and Memory: Floating Island



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Bae Joon-sung, The Costume o Painter – Museum R, Legs Lef 2 (Previous pages)

Lee Yong-baek, Pieta



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234

Can art theory—the very creation o art-theory—itsel be

“globalized?” What new roles might Korean visual arts and

visual arts institutions play in this process, given the

unprecedented global scale o the production and reception o

contemporary art throughout the world today? For it seems as

i, in this new expansion, we are moving towards a situation in

art as in art theory that, while “global,” is no longer simply

“Western” or “European.” What new roles might East Asian

countries, and in particular, Korea, play in this peculiar moment

o transition and transormation—this contemporary moment

and sense o the moment? Such are the questions o Korea

Contemporary, as distinct rom Korea Modern, when there

seemed to exist a critical or theoretical center in Europe or

America and where the question was how then to be “modern”

without yet being “Western.”

The vitality o the debates and themes in this volume o

Korea Contemporary

John Rajchman



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contemporary Korean thought and criticism testifies to this

new situation, this sense o a new moment. But what then is

“contemporary,” and what then is “Korean?” How are these two

questions inseparable rom one another? In what ways do they

translate as a desire or an urgency, elt elsewhere in other ways,

in Beijing or Berlin or Sao Paolo or New York? For the idea

o contemporaneity in Korea Contemporary comes at a time

o a larger shi in geographies and artistic itineraries, which

is recasting the markers or parameters o inherited histories

and landscapes. We can see this new geo-aesthetic situation in

contrast to two earlier more “centered” voyages, to Paris and to

New York.

Two centuries ago, one would travel to Paris, “capital o the

nineteenth century,” in the words o Walter Benjamin, himsel

writing at a time o his own “voyage to Moscow” in the 1930s.

Even i one didn’t actually go there, one could travel in one’s

mind or one’s work or one’s own locale, adapting it accordingly.

Paris was then the place one went to or the erment o writers,

movements, avant-gardes. It was a time, enshrined in the

grand stories o European art and aesthetics told by Hegel

when Europe believed that it could monopolize world history.

For Hegel thought that in European and particularly German

philosophy, the idea o art, born in Greek antiquity, would

itsel come to an end as it became absorbed into philosophical

thought. Haunted by Revolution and then the specter o



236

communism, there arose a great new problem in painting and in

poetry: How could the arts ree themselves rom the enclosure

o classical Renaissance Representation, and become “abstract,”

and so collide with “modern lie” and assume new orms? This

problem o abstraction would then be taken up elsewhere, in

many other voyages—or example in relation to notions o

void or absence in traditional non-Western art practices which

themselves had never passed through the European moment o

perspective and science, and its sense o truth or realism.

But aer the Second World War, these problems would be

taken up anew and transormed, giving rise to new ideas o

art, new ways o being an artist. We then find a second voyage,

the voyage to New York. For aer the Second World War, the

European colonial empires would be dissolved and replaced

by a “cold-war” situation that would not itsel be undone until

1989, when the Berlin Wall came down and the Tiananmen

student movement was crushed. For aer the Second World

War, New York, filled with European artistic and intellectual

immigrés, was a city that, assisted by its great “modern”

museums, became a kind o crucible o artistic transormation.

Art history and art criticism would be completely transormed

and would assume a new vital role in this situation. By the 60’s

and 70’s there would arise a new idea o art itsel, emancipating

itsel rom the story and preoccupations o European

Modernism, a “contemporary art” defining itsel in sometimes



237

defiant distinction rom a “modern” one. No longer necessarily

produced in studio or exhibited in a “white cube” space, no

longer relying on the traditional skills o painting and sculpture,

which were themselves in the process o expanding their fields—

sculpture reeing itsel rom the “figure on the pedestal,” or

painting rom the “picture on the wall”—the visual arts moved

into a new uncharted realm. At the same time, the traditional

distinctions between “fine” or “high” art and popular or mass

culture, everyday lie and the role o bodies in it, and the circuits

o new media and inormation were eroded or undone. One

became an artist first (a conceptual, earth, pop or process artist);

and the question o medium, so important in Modernism

or Formalism, became secondary. The role o criticism itsel

changed as the old boundaries between art and criticism were

transormed: criticism as a kind o writing, art; art as a kind o

criticism, even o institutions. In this heady moment, visual arts

and arts institutions would play a role without parallel or the

modernisms in other arts—writing, architecture, or music—and

oered a new space o intersection and experimentation among

them—“sound-art” rather than music, “language-art” rather

than poetry, “an-architecture” rather than a building. Because

o its key role in this process, there thus arose the new “voyage

to New York,” real or imaginary, and with it, new historical

narratives o neo- and post- European art.

Perhaps then it is characteristic o our contemporary moment



239

object o a recent show at the Museum o Modern Art and

Lee Uan, now slated or a retrospective at the Guggenheim

Museum. In the case o Nam June Paik, we now see a

multilinear work, cutting across divisions not simply between

sound or perormance and the visual arts, but also between

Europe, New York and Asia. With the porta-pack, in 1961, Nam

June Paik invented what would be called “video art”, even i

at that time it was rather dierent rom much that goes on by

that name today. For in inventing video art Nam June Paik

created what in French theory is called a dispositi: a new

arrangement o space, time and movement in a gallery, in a

great struggle with broadcast television, the new “global village”

it had created, the “inormation super-highway” to which it

would lead. I this struggle now seems displaced or almost

obsolete in a world in which Google battles with the Chinese

State, it nevertheless orms part o a larger current theoretical

question: what are dispositis, what is their history, and how do

contemporary moments arise in them? Within this history yet

to be written we can see Nam June Paik’s invention not simply

in an Asian context, in relation to Fluxus, but also, looking back,

to Berlin Dada or example, and, looking orward, to new sorts

o dispositis in the visual arts and their role in the new history

o exhibitions now being explored. For the history o art is not

simply the history o objects, but also the history o the spaces

in which they are arranged and connected to one another.

With Lee Uan, as with Nam June Paik, we find a passage



240

through post-war Japan, but one that tended to move more

towards Paris and the problem o theory or philosophy than

New York and its transormations o the idea o art. For Mono-

Ha, perhaps more than Gutai or Fluxus, had strong relations

with the whole question and questioning o representation

in post-war French thought, and the attempt, in Asia, to

find something like an “other space” to it. In this way, Lee

Uan helped define a new role or philosophy or theory, a

new problematic o “thinking in art” as distinct rom “theory

about art,” which still remains contemporary. How do artists,

with their peculiar means and preoccupations, think, oen

in aective and sensory ways, in such a way as to give us a

new brain, a new body, and how does this thinking arise in a

peculiar artistic zone to which theory is addressed and o which

it has need? We thus find two contemporary questions: What is

a dispositi? And what is thinking in art?

Perhaps these questions are ones through which the inventions

o these two great Korean artists will today be mobilized across

new lines and borders, or as part o other voyages. For it now

seems the uture belongs to those who are able to articulate the

new global orces knocking at the door, along new paths and

itineraries, and involving new kinds o research and exchange.

That is why Korea Contemporary is more than a state o art or

criticism; it is a time and a space or new invention.



Yeobaek

Chagyeong

Meot

Gyeopchim

Haehak

Yunghap

Appendix



242

14 Kim Jeong-hui, 1786–1856

Joseon Dynasty (c. 1844), ink on paper, 23.3x146.4cm

National Treasure No. 180, private collection

Image courtesy of the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea

Kim Jeong-hui, who used the pen name Chusa, was a government ofcial and scholar

o the late Joseon Dynasty. He is also considered one o the greatest calligraphers o the

Joseon Dynasty, having ounded the Chusa-che style that takes its name rom his pen

name. As a scholar, he turned away rom the dominant ideology o the ruling class and

rom abstruse metaphysical discussions to advocate the theory and practice o an objective,

positivistic scholarship that sought truth on the basis o acts. One o Kim’s representative

works, Bitter Cold is a “literati painting” done in gratitude to a pupil who had not orgotten

Kim during his exile on Jeju Island and had twice sent him precious books rom Beijing.

Literati paintings are pictures painted as a leisure pursuit by members o the aristocracy to

express their eelings, rather than works by proessional artists. They place less emphasis

on technique than on showing the noble sentiments o the literati. Painted rapidly with

a “dry brush” technique in which the ink on the brush seems to be drawn lightly across

the paper, Bitter Cold is a work that conveys a loy combination o poetry, calligraphy, and

painting, with Kim’s own painting and writing skills complemented by poems and words o appreciation rom several amous figures. It also shows Kim’s struggles to maintain nobility

and dignity even in lonely banishment.

16 Chang Uc-chin, 1917–1990

1987, oil on canvas, 23.1x45.7cm

Private collection

Image courtesy of Chang Ucchin Foundation

Chang Uc-chin was born in Yeongi-gun, Chuncheongnam-do and graduated with a degree

in painting rom the Imperial University o Arts in Tokyo beore working as a proessor at

Seoul National University. He died in 1990 at the age o 73. His lie and his unique sense o

orm made him a major influence on a whole era o modern Korean art. When we examine

his oeuvre, which combines a strong Korean identity with a personal artistic language,

we can see that he was an artist who lived at both extremes o individual and universal,

and or whom lie and art coincided. In this painting, a humble Korean-style house stands

against a misty riverside background, and the colors o the water and the sky merge in a

blue dreamworld. A peaceul scene unolds, with a crane and a dog loitering around the

house while people enjoy a boat ride on the river. Through this painting, viewers can see

how Chang lived like a literati painter o old, painting in pursuit o sel-cultivation and

liberation.

18 Park Soo-keun, 1914–1965

1962, oil on hardboard, 41.2x79.2cm

Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art

Image courtesy of Doart Publishing

Born in Yanggu, Gangwon-do, painter Park Soo-keun was prevented by poverty rom

seeking ormal training in art, but he began to work regularly as an artist aer winning a

national contest. His works capture the hard lie o the common people aer the Korean

War, using simple compositions on a surace like rough granite, built up rom multiple thick

layers o paint. In Homecoming, one o Park Soo-keun’s masterpieces, we see the subjects

that he liked to paint most: trees and women carrying things on their heads, expressing

the hard lie o the common people. The tree in the picture has bare branches, like a scene

o cold winter or early spring beore the new shoots begin to appear, representing the

harsh conditions in which people lived at the time. However, we don’t see a cold and harsh

depiction o reality so much as the artist’s distinctive warm nostalgia or his hometown.



243

20

Joseon Dynasty (16th century), H. 31.4cm D. 7.0cm (mouth) 10.6cm (base)

Treasure No. 1060, National Museum of Korea

Image courtesy of National Museum of Korea

Porcelain, a kind o pottery made by coating a pure white base clay with a transparent glaze

and firing it in a kiln, is the most common orm o ceramics produced during the Joseon

Dynasty. This piece has a very characteristic shape or vessels rom the early Joseon era with

a flared mouth, slender neck, round body, and broad base. The “void” space at the top o the

jar is set o by a whimsical design o a rope hanging down rom the neck. The rope design

was created using a pigment rarely used at the time, iron-brown. The rope was first drawn

in blue pigment, then gone over in iron oxide with a fine, pliant writing brush to bring out

the design. In the firing process, the high temperature causes a chemical change in the iron

pigment to produce a strong reddish coloring. This rope design was not a common theme

in ceramics o the time, but seems to have been suggested by the appearance o a liquor

bottle with a rope attached, and the vessel is outstanding or its simple yet ree depiction, its

restrained brushwork, and its refined composition admirably balancing void and design.

22 Kim Chong-yung, 1915–1982

1958, iron plate, 57.5x14x23cm


Image courtesy of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art

Kim Chong-yung was born into an aristocratic amily in Changwon, Gyeongsangnam-

do, and graduated rom Tokyo Art School. He lived in seclusion until Korea was liberated

rom Japanese colonial rule in 1945. Kim ounded the sculpture department at the newly

opened College o Art at Seoul National University. He is requently cited by artists who are

considered the pioneers o Korean contemporary abstract sculpture and was known as the

possessor o a noble literati spirit and an outstanding expert in calligraphy. Work 58-3 is a

masterpiece o metal sculpture, a medium that was rare at the time, and it stands out or its

geometric yet organic curves. In this work we can glimpse Kim’s orward-looking aesthetics

that sought to realize the essence o pure orms on the basis o creative insights into nature

and humanity. Through the simple shape produced by working only a little on the thick

metal plates beore welding them together, we can see the spirituality that the artist was

pursuing.

24 Bae Bien-U, 1950–

2006, color print, 160x310cm

Artist’s collection

Image courtesy of the artist

Bae Bien-U hails rom Yeosu, Jeollanam-do, where the shores are dotted with beautiul

islands. Aer graduating with a degree in design rom Hongik University, he taught

himsel photography. One o Korea’s leading contemporary landscape photographers, he

concentrates on natural sights indigenous to Korea such as pine trees, mountains, and thesea, turning them into abstract lines and suraces. He likes to capture the delicacy o light

and mist around dawn in monotone photographs reminiscent o Oriental ink paintings.

In this work, one o the Pine Tree Series or which Bae Bien-U is best known, a pine tree

stands in the center o a panorama, the hills and fields on either side o it illuminated by

the rising sun. To Koreans, the pine tree is a symbol o noble character and the emotional

root o the nation. In Bae’s work this natural element is captured in a simple and restrained

composition that shows a modernist ethos with a lyrical and meditative attitude toward

nature.



244

26 Suh Do-ho, 1962–

2005, silk, stainless steel tube, 326.2x211.5x100cm

Private collection


Suh Do-ho was educated at Seoul National University and the Rhode Island School o

Design, finally earning a Master o Fine Art degree at Yale. Based in New York since then,

Suh is now an internationally exhibited artist. He began to receive critical attention with

a re-creation o his traditional-style amily house in Seoul using a jade-green diaphanous

abric. Suh’s work begins with memories o places he has inhabited and extends to

introduce processes o the constant transormation o identity via experiences o diverse

cultures. It expresses the contradictory condition o endless collisions and combinations

between human identities and the socio-cultural spaces that control them. Gate reproduces

at ull size a portion o the traditional Korean house where the artist long resided, which his

parents continue to occupy. It evokes anguish toward cultural identity and nostalgia and

longing or home elt by an artist who travels the world like a nomad.

28 Jeong Seon, 1676–1759

Joseon Dynasty (1711), ink on silk, 36.0x37.4cm

National Museum of Korea


Jeong Seon liked to travel, and while roaming around the celebrated beauty spots all over

Korea he developed a new kind o painting called “true view” landscapes, realistic pictures

based on actual scenes. The name Danbalryeong Pass (“hair-cutting pass”) is thought to

derive rom the idea that when people get their first view o the Geumgang Mountains,

they become so enchanted that it makes them want to cut o their hair and become monks,

shedding all attachment to worldly things. This painting shows visitors admiring the view

o the Geumgang Mountains rom Danbalryeong Pass. Compared to other “true view”

landscape paintings, it has economical brushwork and omits some o the details o the

scene, leaving space or the viewer to see the Geumgang Mountains through the void.

30 Kim Hong-joo, 1945–

1993, oil on canvas, 210x320cm

Sungkang Foundation of Culture


Born in Hoein, Chungcheongbuk-do, Kim Hong-joo obtained a BA and MA in painting at

Hongik University. His paintings show figures, maps, writing, or flowers with delicate brush

strokes reminiscent o embroidery, subtly combining symbolic imagery with rich artistic

nuances. Painting with the grain o the canvas as i embroidering stitch by stitch with a fine

brush, he has continually tackled the problem o reproduction and illusionism through

his unconventional composition, his bold omission o background, and his critical

dismantling and reconstruction o the subject. Overturning the relationship between figureand ground by filling the canvas with a single lea or a landscape scene, he persistently

interrogates the essence o painting itsel. In Untitled , the subject is the crater lake on Mt.

Baekdusan, and the contrast between the careully reproduced mountain peak and the

white void o the lake invites unlimited interpretations.



245

32 Lee Ufan, 1936–

2002, oil on canvas, 112.5x194.2cm

Lee Uan has been producing his Correspondance series since the 1990s. The distinguishing

eature o this series is that it presents spaces bearing only a very small number o brush

strokes. Since the 1990s Lee Uan has been gradually moving towards large canvases with

most o the wide space le as void and only one or a ew dots painted with vigorous strokes

o the brush. However, the size, position, spacing, and brush stroke direction o each dot

creates correspondances with other dots that give the whole work a powerul presence

and tension. Using minimal units o expression—dots and lines—and leaving unpainted

expanses o void, Lee is creating a new compositional principle that connects the inside o

the painting with the outside.

34 Boomoon, 1955–

2010, laserchrome print, each 210x140cm



Since holding his first solo exhibition at the Seoul Press Center in 1975, Daegu-born

Boomoon has been pursuing the concept o “photograph as attitude,” going beyond the

expressive or documentary unctions o photography to ocus on the thoughts and ideas

that come into our minds when we look at certain objects. His large-ormat landscape

photographs provide a special visual and cognitive experience by making us eel the

absolute power o nature. As a representative example, his Naksan series consists o black-

and-white landscape photographs taken on wintry sea shores, with hal the rame taken up

by snow. The still land contrasts with the violent movement o the wind, snow, and waves

to reveal a momentary landscape that cannot be seen with the eye alone. Although this

is a natural scene that leaves no room or human intervention, through its photographic

realization anyone can stand where the artist stood with his camera.

36 Kim Sooja, 1957–

2000, Single channel video projection, 10:30 loop, silent


Image courtesy of the Kimsooja Studio

A widely exhibited artist who has participated in many international exhibitions such as

the Venice Biennale, Kim Sooja graduated rom Hongik University and has been based in

New York since the 1990s. In the 1980s, Kim introduced sewing into her work, which later

gradually evolved into installations that utilize used clothes and everyday abrics. She has

deepened the meaning o the act o sewing by developing it conceptually as a combination

o separate elements while expanding her work into the realm o perormance and video

art. In her video, A Laundry Woman, the artist reflects on lie and death. Gazing at the

Yamuna River in India, she seems to hope or purification o all things; not only the flowing

water but also remnants rom a nearby cremation site. The image o the artist is turnedaway rom us, but viewers sense her aectionate gaze toward the departed and humanity in

general.



246

38 Lee Ufan, 1936–

1979, oil on canvas, 184x260cm



Born into a distinguished Conucian household, as a child Lee Uan studied poetry and

painting with a literati scholar. In 1956, Lee interrupted his studies o traditional painting

at Seoul National University and moved to Japan, earning a degree in philosophy at Nihon

University. There, he came under the influence o the Kyoto school o philosophy, which

pursued deconstruction o the Western anthropocentric subjectivity. He introduced this

way o thinking into the concept o his own artmaking to argue that “proposition” rather

than “creation” best approaches truth. As an artist equally versed in theory and practice,

Lee created an aesthetic o “encounter” and “emptiness” in his work. Distinct rom Western

minimalism or conceptual art, Lee’s work has realized Asian thought and also became

the theoretical oundation or Mono-ha, the first truly Asian modernist movement. A

representative example o Lee’s work, From Line suggests the circulation and infinity o the

universe where there is neither beginning nor end through the repetitive appearance and

disappearance o lines.

40 Suh Se-ok, 1929–

1989, ink on paper, 162x262cm



Suh Se-ok won the Prime Minister’s Prize in the first national contest in 1949, when he

was studying Oriental painting in the College o Art at Seoul National University. Seeking

to give Oriental painting a new contemporary orm while maintaining its pure traditional

spirit, he became the leader o a group called Mungnimhoe that was established in 1960,

and spearheaded a renewal o Oriental painting. He led the way in an abstract trend within

Oriental painting, and worked or many years training artists at his alma mater. Dancers

is an important work in the People series that Suh has been working on or many years.

Simplified human orms expressed in lines ull o tension stretch across the rame with their

arms on each other’s shoulders. From bottom up, the ink changes rom thick to medium

thickness, then again rom thick to light, creating a strong natural rhythm. The strong, firm

brushwork and the tension between ink and void arises rom re-interpreting the traditional

literati painting, tempering its cold spirit with a new warmth and dynamism.

42

Joseon Dynasty (18th century), H. 44.5cm D. 21.5cm (mouth) 16.5cm (base)

Treasure No. 1424, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art


This kind o vessel is called a “moon jar” because o its nearly round shape and transparent

milky glaze. This unique and characteristic orm o Korean porcelain ware was in common

use in the homes o the aristocracy during the Joseon Dynasty, and by the nineteenthcentury most reasonably well-to-do households had one or two. The surace is pure white

without any kind o design or carving. The black stains on the middle part o this example

appeared naturally when a liquid such as soy sauce soaked into the clay, or this was a

vessel in practical use. The moon jar is considered the most Korean orm, and with its

round body and subtle white coloring, it has a natural air o riendliness. Because these

vessels were very large, they could not be made in one piece on the potter’s wheel. They

were made by a painstaking process o spinning the upper and lower halves separately and

then joining them together. This example has very little distortion in the middle part where

the two halves are joined, and its side curves orm almost a perect circle, giving the whole

piece a sense o balance that makes it a definitive example o the mid-Joseon Dynasty

moon jar.



247

44 Koo Bohnchang, 1953–


Original Vessel from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art



Born in Seoul, Koo Bohnchang studied business administration and worked in a large

company beore ormally studying photography at the University o Fine Arts in Hamburg,

Germany in the mid-1980s. Aer returning to Korea, Koo studied the diverse expressive

possibilities o photography as a medium through a variety o ormal experiments such

as pasting up photographs or stitching them with thread. These iconoclastic experiments

caused a stir in the Korean photography world, which was dominated by more

straightorward photography at the time. Koo opened up a new path or contemporary

Korean photography by eradicating the boundary between photography and art. His Vessel

series, which depicts Joseon Dynasty porcelain vessels scattered among sixteen museums in

our countries, is a work that re-interprets the hidden beauty o Joseon porcelain through

a delicate sensibility. By recapturing his impressions o seeing Korean porcelain kept in

overseas museums, Koo not only caught the elegant external beauty o the porcelain, but

probed into the deep and graceul eelings that flowed within it. In doing so, he gentlyoverturned the socially accepted meanings o lost, vanished, and small things.

46 Cheong Kwang-ho, 1959–

2007, copper wire, H. 240cm D. 225cm



Aer graduating with a degree in sculpture rom Seoul National University, Cheong Kwang-

ho began to produce his works with an interest in the development o modernism in

Korea. Previously having concentrated on object installations and their expansion in the

exhibition context, he now ocuses on the mutual awareness o object and cognitive subject

and its surace expression. His method is not to strengthen the individual characteristics

o painting or o sculpture, but rather to weaken them in pursuit o his own artistry and

stance. Thus, while Cheong Kwang-ho’s works are both sculptural and painterly, they are

neither sculptures nor paintings. The “moon jar” expanded into metal netting is a kind

o phantom that exists only on the surace, standing at the boundary between object and

image.

54 Kim Su-cheol, dates unknown

Joseon Dynasty (19th century), ink on paper, 114x46.5cm



Kim Su-cheol was a literati painter o non-aristocratic status in the late Joseon Dynasty, and

although his birth and death dates are not known, he is thought to have been active in themid-nineteenth century. He was taught to paint by Kim Jeong-hui and excelled at painting

both landscapes and flowering plants. In his early days, under the influence o his teacher,

he painted many pictures embodying meanings in the literati style, but later he achieved

an individual style with a new eeling characterized by radical simplification o orms, resh

thin colors, and unusual brushwork. His later works not only represent a new trend in the

Joseon Dynasty art world, but are considered to give a contemporary eeling even today.

In Summer Landscape, we can see Kim Su-cheol’s original style with its bold omission and

distortion o objects and its use o emotive colors. The mountains and plains are portrayed

with thin color and dots, showing an uncrowded composition appropriate to a summer

scene, while the flat depiction o the scene, with no dierentiation o near and ar, gives a

contemporary eel.



248

56

Joseon Dynasty (rebuilt 1572)

Location: 30 Byeongsan-ri, Pungcheon-myeon, Andong-si,

Gyeongsangbuk-do

Image courtesy of BBU Studio

A Conucian academy (seowon) is a type o private institution that was set up all over Korea

rom the mid-Joseon period on to honor the memory o noted sages and educate people

o ability. The Byeongsan Seowon is one such academy preserving the ancestral tablets o

Yu Seong-yong, Chie State Councillor during the reign o King Seonjo (r. 1567–1608). It

originated in the late Goryeo Dynasty as a private school or the Yu amily o the Pungsan-

hyeon district, but Yu Seong-yong moved it to its present location in 1572. Later, it produced

many scholars while commemorating Yu’s learning and virtues. Its pavilion building,

constructed without walls or doors so that one could look out in all directions, served as a

place within the academy or cultivating the mind through nature. Unlike most pavilions,

which are built on a spot that commands a ull open view, Mandaeru, the pavilion o the

Byeongsan Seowon, has a large mountain right in ront o it, but its long horizontal design

enables the occupant to view the whole o that mountain as an unlimited space.

58 Seung H-Sang, 1952–

Completed 2000, reinforced concrete structure

Location: 190-10 Jangchungdong 2-ga, Jung-gu, Seoul

Image courtesy of Irojae

Seung H-Sang is noted or his architectural philosophy o “the beauty o poverty,” which

arises rom a critical reaction to the domination o the twentieth century by Western

civilization. Aer studying architecture at Seoul National University and the Vienna

University o Technology, Seung studied with the giant o modern Korean architecture Kim

Swoo-geun, then opened his own studio named Irojae and brought a breath o resh air to

the Korean architectural scene. One o his representative works, Welcomm City, consists

o our box-like work spaces made rom the weather-resistant steel plate material Corten

on exposed concrete oundations. Between these our boxes are three independent empty

spaces that Seung calls “urban voids.” These empty spaces are the most important element

in this architecture, designed so that the changing sunlight, wind, and views o the city

outside can be brought in through the gaps to the interior o the building.

60 Jeong Seon, 1676–1759

Joseon Dynasty (18th century), ink on paper, fan 28.2x80.5cm

Gansong Museum of Art

Image courtesy of Gansong Museum of Art

Jeong Seon (pen name Gyeomjae) was amous or his “true view” landscapes, including

many paintings o Geumgang Mountains. One o Korea’s most celebrated mountain ranges,

the Geumgang Mountains are divided into our areas—Naegeumgang, Oegeumgang,

Singeumgang, and Haegeumgang—all o which have long been a source o inspirationto many artists or their outstanding natural beauty. The present work is a view o

Naegeumgang or the “Inner” Geumgang Mountains. Unlike an ordinary landscape painting,

this one had to be skillully arranged to fit the shape o a an, with the painting centered in

the middle part o the an and a broad void le around the outside.



249

62 Kim Won, 1943–

Completed 1987, granite exterior

Location: 73-13 Suyu-dong, Gangbuk-gu, Seoul

Image courtesy of Kimwon Architect & Group Forum

Kim Won majored in architectural engineering at Seoul National University beore

studying architecture in the International Postgraduate Course in Housing and Planning

at Bouwcentrum, the Netherlands. He is an environmental activist who has always

insisted that the first concern o architecture and urban planning or a new era should be

environmental issues, and his own work puts that into practice. The Education Center or

Unification, which aims to stimulate national pride and prepare or the reunification o

the Korean peninsula, was built on a generous plot o land on Mt. Dobongsan donated by

a private businessman. As an environmentalist, Kim did not want to cut into the sloping

mountain site, so he planned the Center in six separate buildings divided according to

unction—Training Hall, Exhibition Hall, Welare Hall, Living Hall, etc.—and connected

them with exterior stairways that ollowed the natural slope o the land. Each building

has skylights in the roo to make the whole building bright and airy, and the complex

was designed to provide varied views o the beautiul surrounding scenery rom dierent

angles.

63

Founded 634 (rebuilt 1783), Treasure No. 292

Location: Gamgyo-ri, Sangseo-myeon, Buan-gun, Jeollabuk-do

Image courtesy of Park Jeong-hoon

Gaeamsa Temple was first built in 634 in the Baekje Kingdom but moved to its current

location during the Goryeo Dynasty in 1314. During the Joseon Dynasty, Gaeamsa was

burned down in the Japanese invasions o the 1590s and rebuilt in 1783. As the whole

country had been laid waste by war, the temple could not be restored to its earlier more

extensive state, and only a single Buddha Hall was built, with each side just three bays long.

Buddhist temples generally aim to reproduce the Buddhist paradise in their arrangement

o buildings, each with a dierent unction, and in their harmony with the surrounding

mountain scenery. The rebuilt Gaeamsa consisted only o a single modest building, but its

interior created a kind o Buddhist paradise with its lavish decoration.

64 Ahn Jong-yuen, 1952–

2008, stainless steel, D. 700cm

Phoenix Island Agora, Jeju Island


Born in Miryang, Gyeongsangnam-do, Ahn Jong-yuen graduated with a degree in art rom

Dong-A University, Busan, and went on to major in fine art at New York’s School o Visual

Arts. Through experimental works in a variety o media including two-dimensional, three-

dimensional, and installation works, Ahn has developed an avant-garde oeuvre that crosses

the boundaries between old and new media, and between public and private realms.Located where the land meets the sea at Seopjikkoji near Seongsan Ilchulbong (“sunrise

peak”) on Jeju Island, Ahn Jong-yuen’s public art work Gwang Pung Je Wol adds a ritual,

epic note to a building designed by Mario Botta in the shape o a pyramid. Measuring some

7 meters in diameter, it is a “moon o the earth” that stands at a point o contact between

the natural and the artificial, a antasy that sublimates the character o the location into an

artistic language.



250

66 Choi Tae-hoon, 1965–

2009, stainless steel (plasma technique), 350x350x300cm

Banyan Tree Hotel


Choi Tae-hoon majored in sculpture at Kyung Hee University and its graduate school. Using

the plasma technique, he examines the roots o lie through such subjects as humanity,

nature, and the universe, and in Skin o Time he structuralizes the meaning o time and lie.

To Choi, the great river o time is both a mother that conceives lie and at the same time

a poison that corrodes lie. He gives lie to dead orms like derelict pyramids and burnt-

out old trees by casting light on them, and uses the plasma technique to dissect the traces

o time. Through an upside-down pyramid that defies the laws o gravity and a tree that

fills up its interior, he represents the overturning o time. Through the tree bark built up in

multiple layers and light emanating rom inside, he represents the outer crust o time.

68 Jung Yeon-doo, 1969–

2007, color print, 122x159cmArtist’s collection


Born in Jinju, Gyeongsangnam-do, Jung Yeon-doo graduated with degrees in sculpture

rom Seoul National University and Britain’s Central Saint Martin’s College o Art and

Design, then completed a master’s degree at Goldsmiths, University o London. He was the

first Korean artist since Nam June Paik to exhibit at New York’s Museum o Modern Art, and

the first Korean artist to hold a solo exhibition at a major gallery in France. By showing the

whole process o manuacturing a ake, Jung Yeon-doo’s works declare that everything is

ake, giving ood or thought to the fixed ideas o audiences accustomed to the visual media.

They make one question the truth o everything that we see, hear, or eel. In his Location

series, Jung examines the boundary between reality and unreality. The gap between the

background o the work, which is obviously aked, and the figures nonchalantly acting as i

the background were real, becomes a metaphor or our age.

70

Constructed 1530

Location: 123 Jigok-ri, Nam-myeon, Damyang-gun, Jeollanam-do


The mid-Joseon scholar-ofcial Yang San-bo (1503–1557) lost all interest in worldly success

when his teacher Jo Gwang-jo was banished due to actional strie. He went home to build

a garden which he named Soswaewon, meaning “clean and cool.” A fine example o a

Korean garden, Soswaewon centers on a little valley with a flowing stream. In constructing

each o the buildings, the space was careully planned to harmonize the natural with the

artificial, creating a neo-Conucian paradise that resembled the original beauty o nature.

The garden has about ten buildings which can be grouped according to unctional and

spatial characteristics in our areas: Aeyangdan, Ogokmun, Jewoldang, and Gwangpunggak.Within the garden are groves o bamboo, pine, zelkova, and maple trees, and around it

are natural-looking walls o earth and stone, bearing stone plates and wooden plaques

inscribed with the names Aeyangdan, Ogokmun, and Soswaecheosayanggongjiryeo. In one

o the buildings, a wood engraving o Soswaewon made in the 31st year o King Yeongjo’s

reign (1755) has been preserved, and rom this we know the original appearance o the

garden. In this beautiul garden we can sense the noble character and loyalty o Korean

scholar-ofcials.



251

72 Won Seong-won, 1972–




Won Seong-won, who hails rom Goyang, Gyeonggi-do, graduated rom the sculpture

department at Chung-Ang University, the Kunstakademie Düsseldor, and the Academy

o Media Arts Cologne. She began to produce photographic collages with her Dreamroom

series, which realizes the dreams o her riends who live in small rooms. Dreamroom

– Michalis is one such work, created or her riend Michalis rom Cyprus. It brings the

columns o a Greek temple and the stream water rom Michalis’s home into his room.

Having ascertained her subject’s wishes, Won sets o to take photographs as i collecting

the world, then cuts out hundreds o photographs or a single work and careully assembles

a photo-montage with a computer mouse. The attraction o Won’s work is the pleasure o

finding a variety o stories hidden within the work: not only a plausible image created by

digital editing but the artist and her riends, the conversations they had about their dream

spaces, and the eelings o riendship that emerge rom these antasy spaces spliced together

by time.

74

Location: Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul


Changdeokgung is a Joseon Dynasty palace built in the fih year o King Taejong’s

reign (1405). At that time there was already a main palace in Seoul, Gyeongbokgung,

as well as the Royal Ancestral Shrines (Jongmyo), so Changdeokgung was created as a

royal villa. Located to the east o Gyeongbokgung, Changdeokgung and the adjoining

Changgyeonggung were together known as the “eastern palaces.” Unlike other palaces

which had orderly spatial arrangements, Changdeokgung was built on the southern slopes

o Maebong Peak, and its main buildings were laid out according to the natural shape o

the land. Buyongji is an artificial lotus pond in the back garden with a pavilion. Reflecting

the idea that heaven was round and the earth square, a round island symbolizing heaven

was made in a square pond that symbolized the earth. To the south o the pond is a pavilion

that orms the shape o a cross when seen rom above. This place was used by the king to

hold congratulatory banquets or those who had passed the civil service examinations.

The surrounding scenery o the Changdeokgung back garden, changing with every season,

is much admired. Showing clearly how Korean culture values harmony with nature and

respect or its principles, Changdeokgung and its back garden have been recognized as an

important piece o landscaping, and designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997.

78 Kim Chang-kyum, 1961–

2006–2007, video installation, 14 min.

Savina Museum of Contemporary Art


Aer graduating with a degree in painting rom Sejong University, Kim Chang-kyum went

first to Italy to study sculpture at the Academia Carrara, and then to Germany to study with

Jannis Kounellis at the Kunstakademie Düsseldor. The technical process o synthesis in

video installations and photography and the resulting synthesized image are important

themes that run through Kim Chang-kyum’s work. In Watershadow – Four Seasons, images

are projected onto a white tub to create the illusion that there is water in it. In addition to

ripples and water sounds, the image o a person is visible in the water, along with scenes

that change rom spring to summer, autumn, and winter. At times, a person’s shadow seems

to pass over the tub, making the water become agitated or disappear, and showing the

viewer how surprising time can be.



252

80 Lee Hun-chung, 1967–

2006, installation, 500x300x50cm

Gangha Museum of Art


82 Kim Hee-soo, 1977–

2007, photo collage and resin coating on wood panel, 25x20cm

Artist’s collectionImage courtesy of the artist

84 Yoo Seung-ho, 1974–

2009, binoculars, tripod, fishing line, plastic, spray, acrylic,

dimensions variable




253

86 Lee Myong-ho, 1975–




92

4D Art Performance by D’strict

Image courtesy of D’strict

96 Jo Hui-ryong, 1789–1866

Joseon Dynasty (19th century), colored ink on paper, 124.8x371.2cm





254

98 Ahn Sang-soo, 1952–

2007, steel, typographic installation at Lock Museum

Image courtesy of the artist, Photographed by Park Gi-su

100 Han Sung-pil, 1972–

2009, installation project at the SPACE Group,

solvent print on canvas, 720x1680m

chromogenic print, 152x122cm, private collection

Image courtesy of SPACE Group

102 Hwang Doo-jin, 1963–

Korean-style house in Gahoe-dong, Jongno-gu, SeoulImage courtesy of Park Young-chae



255

103 Kim Kai-chun, 1958–

Completed 2008, lecture hall of Kookmin University Graduate School

of Techno Design

Image courtesy of Park Young-chae

104 Yi Hyeong-nok, 1808–?

Joseon Dynasty (19th century), Eight-panel standing screen,

color on paper, 139.5x421.2cm



106

Joseon Dynasty (19th century), Chinese mahogany and paulownia wood,

21.2x108x28.4cm





256

108 Bae Se-hwa, 1980–

2010, walnut, 110x63x65cm

Private collection

Image courtesy of Gallery SEOMI, photographed by Park Myung-rae

109 Kwon Jae-min, 1976–

2009, walnut (wood carving), 220x83x150cm

Korean Cultural Centre UK


110 Choi Byung-hoon, 1952–

2007, laminated walnut veneer (black varnished) on beech veneer,

black granite, 174x55x90cm

Vitra Design Museum




257

112 Kang Ik-joong, 1960–

2010, H. 19.8m, external installation on three-story steel structure

Image courtesy of Ahn Graphics

114 Min Byung-geol, 1968–

2008, variable installation, wood



116 Shin Yun-bok, 1758–1817 (?)

Joseon Dynasty (19th century), color on silk, 114.2x45.7cm





258

118

Joseon Dynasty


120

Vin Collection by Gang Geum-seongDesign by Gang Geum-seong

Produced by Suryusanbang

Image courtesy of Suryusanbang, Photographed by Park Jeong-hoon

122

Created by Yi Bong-ju, 1926–

Holder of Important Intangible Cultural Property No. 77




259

124

Baekje period, gilt-bronze incense burner, H. 64cm W. 11.8kg

Treasure No. 287, Buyeo National Museum

Image courtesy of Buyeo National Museum

126

Three Kingdoms period (early 7th century), gilt copper, H. 93.5cm

National Treasure No. 83, National Museum of Korea


127

Late Baekje Period (late 6th century), granite relief, H. 2.8m (main figure)

National Treasure No. 84

Location: 2-1 Yonghyeon-ri, Unsan-myeon, Seosan-si,

Chungcheongnam-do




260

134

Late Joseon Dynasty (c. 1824–1828), color on silk,

16-panel folding screen, 273x576cm


Korea University Museum & Dong-A University Museum, Busan

Image courtesy of Korea University Museum

136

Location: Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu, SeoulImage courtesy of BBU Studio

138 Choi Jeong-hwa, 1961–

2009, installation of plastic baskets, dimensions variable

Image courtesy of National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea



261

140 Lee Sea-hyun, 1967–

2009, oil on linen, 300x300cm



142

Location: Unni-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul

Image courtesy of Yim Seock-jae

144 Ahn Kyu-chul, 1955–

2006, 840x840x200cm, mixed media installation

Cyan Museum of Art




262

146 Koh Myung-keun, 1964–

2007, film and plastic, 70x50x50cm

Private collection


148

Late Joseon Dynasty (19th century), 57x57cmThe Museum of Korean Embroidery

Image courtesy of The Museum of Korean Embroidery

149 Chae Eun-mi, 1967–

2009, gold leaf injection model and mother-of-pearl, 105.6x105.6x7cm

Collection of the Royal Family of Dubai




263

150 Shin Sang-ho, 1947–

2008, glazed ceramic, 500x450cm



152 Joseon Dynasty (17th–18th century), wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl,

8.0x31.3x31.3cm



154 Han Ki-chang, 1966–

2010, X-ray film on panaflex fabric, LED program, mixed media,

600x146cm (p.154), 450x900cm (p.156)





264

158


166

Garak Gaksikeuni mask 35.0x38.0cm

Tongyeong Malttugi mask 29.0x22.4cm

Tongyeong Somu mask 22.0x18.5cmTongyeong Bibi Yangban mask 14.5x23.0cm

Garak Sangju Seonsan Yangban mask 20.5x15.5cm

Dongnae Yaryu Malttugi mask 33.4x47.0cm



168




265

169

Founded 2004

Image courtesy of Noridan

170 Gwon Osang, 1974–

2005–2006, color print, mixed media, 75x155x158cmArario Gallery

Image courtesy of Arario Gallery

172 Kim Deuk-sin, 1754–1822

Joseon Dynasty (late 18th–19th century), thin color on paper, 22.5x27.2cm





267

177

Joseon Dynasty (late 18th century),

H. 42.0cm D. 16.1cm (mouth) 16cm (base)

Gyeongju National Museum

Image courtesy of Gyeongju National Museum

178

Joseon Dynasty (15th-16th century), H. 19.5cmThe Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka

Image courtesy of The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka

180 Jang Seung-hyo, 1971–

2009, original 3-dimensional photo collage, 140x240cm

Private collection




268

182 Yoo Seung-ho, 1974–

2000, ink on paper, 116x77.5cm

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea


184 Sung Dong-hoon, 1966–

2007, stainless ceramic, H. 12m

Korea Ceramic Foundation

Image courtesy of Korea Ceramic Foundation

186

Goryeo Dynasty (built 1265)

Treasure No. 824

Location: 28 Cheongnyong-ri, Seoun-myeon, Anseong-si,

Gyeonggi-do




269

187

Seonunsa Temple founded 577, Manseru Hall built 1613

Location: 500 Samin-ri, Asan-myeon, Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do

Image courtesy of Park Young-chae

188 Lee Ji-yen, 1979–

2010, digital photo collage, 84x112cm

Private collection


190 Yi Hwan-kwon, 1974–

2008, sculpture

Grandfather 172x135x110cm, Grandmother 105x151x105cm,

Father 160x136x115cm, Mother 127x107x115cm,

Son 113x76x76cm, Daughter 102x80x70cm

Museo Mefic, Spain




270

198

Unified Silla period (771), Bronze, H. 375cm D. 227cm (mouth) TH. 11-25cm

National Treasure No. 29, Gyeongju National Museum

Image courtesy of Gyeongju National Museum

200 Han Won-suk, 1971–

2008, 3088 speakers, H. 375cm D. 227cm

Gwacheon National Science Museum


202

Location: Back garden of Changdeokgung Palace, Waryong-dong,

Jongno-gu, Seoul




271

204 Nam June Paik, 1932–2006

1988, installation with 1003 TV monitors, H. 18.5m



206 Unified Silla period (756), H. 10.4m W 4.4m (base)


Location: Bulguksa Temple, Jinhyeong-dong, Gyeongju-si,

Gyeongsangbuk-do


208 Choe U-Ram, 1970–

2008, aluminum, stainless steel, carbonate, servo motor, LED, control PC,

custom CPU board, 430x430x520cm

Image courtesy of the artist, photographed by Keizo Kioku



272

209 Yee Soo-kyung, 1963–

2007, ceramic trash, epoxy, 24K, 170x80x85cm



210

Late 18th century, ink and color on paper, each 74.2x42.2cmLeeum, Samsung Museum of Art


212 Hong Ji-yoon, 1970–

2007, colored acrylic and ink painting on Korean rice paper

210x900cm, video installation, 3 min 15 sec





273

214 Kim Joon, 1966–

2008, digital print, 210x120cm

Private collection


216 Jeong Seon, 1676–1749

Joseon Dynasty (1734), thin color on paper, 94.1x130.7cm

National Treasure No. 217, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art


218 Kim Yoon-jae, 1982–

2009, acrylic, ink, and color on mixed media, 45x45x45cm

Private collection




274

220 Lee Lee-nam, 1969–

2009, video installation, LED TV, 500x300x50cm, 7 min 30 sec

Private collection


222 Jeon Joon-ho, 1969–

2003, digital animation, 7 min 10 sec



224 Kim Hong-do, 1745–1806 (?)

Late Joseon Dynasty, color on paper, 28x23.9cm

Treasure No.527, National Museum of Korea




275

226 Debbie Han, 1969–

2009, Lightjet print mounted on aluminum, 180x250cm

Santa Barbara Museum of Art


228 Lee Young-mi, 1972–

2009, variable installation, ceramics and mixed media,

each piece 35x15x17cm



230 Bae Joon-sung, 1967–

2009, oil on canvas, lenticular printing, 181.8x290.9cm

Private collection

Image courtesy of Yeonhui-dong Project



276

232 Lee Yong-baek, 1966–

2008, fibre-reinforced plastic and iron plates, 400x340x320cm





277



Special Advisor

Lee O-Young Writer, Former Minister o Culture

Editor in Chief

Seung H-Sang Architect, Principal o Iroje Architects & Planners

Board of Editors

Bae Bien-U Photographer, Proessor o Seoul Institute o the Arts

Min Joo-sik Proessor o Aesthetics, Yeungnam University

Yoon Jin-sup Art Critic, Proessor o Honam University

Authors

Lee Joon Deputy Director o Leeum, Samsung Museum o Art

Kim Bong-ryol Architect, Proessor o Korea National University o Arts

Ahn Sang-soo Typographer, Graphic Designer, Proessor o Hongik University

Yim Seock-jae Architecture Proessor o Ewha Woman’s University

Choi Joon-sik Religious Studies & Korean Studies Proessor o Ewha Woman’s University

Lee Dae-hyung Curator, Director o Curating Company Hzone

John Rajchman Proessor in the Department o Art History and Archeology, Columbia University



Korean Beauty

2010 Edition

Publisher Seo Kang-soo

Published by Korean Culture and Inormation Service

Ministry o Culture, Sports and Tourism

15 Hyojaro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Republic o Korea

Tel: 82-2-398-1914~20

Fax: 82-2-398-1882

Printed October 28, 2010

Issued November 10, 2010

Special Advisor Lee O-Young

Editor in Chie Seung H-Sang

Board o Editors Bae Bien-U, Min Joo-sik, Yoon Jin-sup

Authors Lee Joon, Kim Bong-ryol, Ahn Sang-soo,

Yim Seock-jae, Choi Joon-sik,

Lee Dae-hyung, John Rajchman

Translators Andrew Killick, Cho Sukyeon

Copyeditor Gene H. Lee

Managing Director Kim Ok-chyul

Producer Park So-hyoun

Art Director Moon Jang-hyun

Designer Seok Soo-ran

Photographe rs Lim Hark-hyoun, Cho Ji-young

Coordinators Lee Dae-hyung, Kim Bo-mi

Editing Assistants Moon Hee-chae, Kim Moon-jeong

Printing Geum Gang Printec

Prepress Ace Color

iPad App Director Sung Ki-won

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Printed and bound in Korea.

ISBN 978-89-7375-120-4 03600

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