Jinsang Yoo is an independent critic based in Seoul. What follows are his “Things Worth Remembering” for 2010:
Kim Beom
Objects Being Taught They are Nothing but Tools
Kim Beom is among the most significant contemporary artists in Korea right now. His solo exhibition at Artsonje Center in Seoul featured installation works commenting on the contemporary conditions of capitalism, literature and the way people perceive the world. These works were both lyric and humorous, as in the series in which scholars teach stones about birds or poems, or teach industrial products about their identity in the history of capitalism.
Details: Kim Beom at Artsonje Center, Seoul, May 15 to August 1. Image credit: Installation view of Objects Being Taught They are Nothing but Tools (2010) at Artsonje Center, Seoul, 2010, photo Myoung-Rae Park, courtesy Kim Beom and Artsonje Center, Seoul.
Space Hamilton and the “19 Performance Relay”
Run by the website podopodo.net in Seoul’s Itaewon area (famous as a commercial district that in part serves the nearby US military base), the alternative art space project Hamilton has been operating for just one year and will conclude this December. The project’s name is borrowed from the well-known hotel in the center of the area. The last performance series produced by Hamilton, “19 Performance Relay,” restricted each performance to no more than 19 minutes. Artists, dancers, curators and students participated in realizing these performances over the course of a night.
Details: “19 Performance Relay” at Space Hamilton, Seoul, November 30.
Festival Bo:m 2010
Lutz Förster
The annual interdisciplinary festival Bo:m is organized by contemporary dance curator Kim Seong-hee, responsible for introducing to Seoul audiences some of the most avant-garde performances around the world since 2000. This year’s program reflected renewed interest in performance in the contemporary art context through collaborations with multiple venues in Seoul including the Arko Art Center and Namsan Art Center.
Details: Festival Bo:m 2010, multiple venues in Seoul, March 27 to May 4. Image credit: Jérôme Bel – performance still of Lutz Förster in Lutz Förster (2009), photo Anna van Kooij.
Taipei Biennial 2010
Mario Garcia Torres at TB10
The curators of this year’s Taipei Biennial, Hongjohn Lin and Tirdad Zolgadr, clearly sought to provide an alternative to the conventional international art festival format. On the one hand they invited selected artists who participated in the 2008 Taipei Biennial to re-assess and re-create in a new context what they had done two years ago, while other participants will again be invited in 2012. There was no explicit theme, although key words for understanding this relatively small, yet innovative biennale project might be “continuity” and “reflection.”
Details: Taipei Biennial 2010, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, September 7 to November 14. Image credit: Mario Garcia Torres – gallery detail of What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (In 36 Slides) (2004-06), part of the installation “Who Killed Robert’s Secret? A Class Portrait” (2004-10) at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2010.
Shigeru Ban’s Centre Pompidou-Metz
The Pompidou Center’s satellite venue in the Alsatian city of Metz, 300km to the east of Paris, opened this May in a building designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban that evokes a white bamboo umbrella. The complex interior with a mirrored ceiling in the magnificent grand nave on the third floor and a view of the city’s cathedral adds to the building’s appeal. The inaugural exhibition – “Masterpieces?” – questioned how the idea of the masterpiece was historically formed in Europe, and then in the rest of the world. Also included was a sub-show on the “grand projects” of contemporary museum architecture in France. Personally, I liked the restaurant on the second story with windows overlooking the surrounding landscape. It is rumored that sooner or later the environs will be filled with new residential buildings, blocking out that natural vista.
Details: “Masterpieces?” at Centre Pompidou-Metz, May 12, 2010, to January 17, 2011. Image credit: Night view of Centre Pompidou-Metz, March 2010, photo Roland Halbe, © Shigeru Ban Architects Europe and Jean de Gastines Architectes, with Philip Gumuchdjian Architects / Metz Métropole / Centre Pompidou-Metz.
Things Worth Remembering 2010