EXTENSION.KR

April 26 — May 26, 2016
Triumph Gallery

Triumph Gallery is presenting a series of exhibitions under the name of EXTENSION, which will showcase the current art scene of different countries. The EXTENSION project addresses artists whose work possesses distinctive local elements, but is at the same time embedded in the general context of contemporary art. The public program on the EXTENSION project, including discussions and the lectures of invited curators, is being presented jointly with the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in the museum’s auditorium.

Extension.kr offers you an opportunity to see the key trends in South Korea’s contemporary art scene. The artists on show are distinguished by the particular attention that they pay to detail and form. In their works they address the problems of interaction between mankind and nature against the backdrop of new technologies, and also the issues of memory and perception of the outside world. In each work, it is possible to discern traces of focused work and intense, profound thought.

The exhibition revolves around dialogue between the artists and curators on the problems of representing one culture in a completely different environment — the recognition of personal and national identity with a focus on both the global and local contexts. Kyunchul Shin notes: "The art world has become globalized in line with the wave of globalization after the 1990s. It is amazing to experience exhibitions opened in various places around the world either directly or indirectly while you yourself work in Korea. At this time in history, interest in indigenous culture defined as local seems paradoxical, but is still important." Thanks to the answers from the artists whose works will be presented at the exhibition, the spectator will become acquainted with the social, historical and cultural context, and also the personal experience of the artists.

Thousand Eyes
2015
Acrylic on canvas
50 × 50 × 3 cm

Extension.kr offers you an opportunity to see the key trends in South Korea’s contemporary art scene. The artists on show are distinguished by the particular attention that they pay to detail and form. In their works they address the problems of interaction between mankind and nature against the backdrop of new technologies, and also the issues of memory and perception of the outside world. In each work, it is possible to discern traces of focused work and intense, profound thought.

The exhibition revolves around dialogue between the artists and curators on the problems of representing one culture in a completely different environment — the recognition of personal and national identity with a focus on both the global and local contexts. Kyunchul Shin notes: "The art world has become globalized in line with the wave of globalization after the 1990s. It is amazing to experience exhibitions opened in various places around the world either directly or indirectly while you yourself work in Korea. At this time in history, interest in indigenous culture defined as local seems paradoxical, but is still important." Thanks to the answers from the artists whose works will be presented at the exhibition, the spectator will become acquainted with the social, historical and cultural context, and also the personal experience of the artists.

The artists Gyungsu An, Yun Kyung Jeong, Unkyung Hur and Jung Yeon Min present a new interpretation of the Far Eastern idea of man and nature co-existing in harmony. When creating his canvases, the artist Gyungsu An is inspired by alienated and abandoned European landscapes, combining impressions from reality with landscapes drawn from his own memories. Artist Jung Yeon Min comments: "In my pictures nature is creatively reprocessed in such a way that you end up with a space where I myself would like to be." In the series Botanimal and Thousand Eyes Unkyung Hur presents the spectator with his personal perception of the world that is aesthetically close to a literary fantasy.

The aftershocks of the main trends of the 1980s and mindun misul ("art of the people") and the topic of Asia’s globalisation are reflected in the works of Sang Yung Kim and Kibeom Kwon. Sang Yung Kim’s sculptures include fragments of different historical buildings in Korea and East Asia, which have undergone changes over the past 50 years. In the video installation Crash Kibeom Kwon tries to document the erosion of boundaries between East and West, the impact of urbanization and the rapid growth of the economy.

Pink Dreamers
2015
Oil, resin, wood
50 × 46 × 115 cm

The artists Gyungsu An, Yun Kyung Jeong, Unkyung Hur and Jung Yeon Min present a new interpretation of the Far Eastern idea of man and nature co-existing in harmony. When creating his canvases, the artist Gyungsu An is inspired by alienated and abandoned European landscapes, combining impressions from reality with landscapes drawn from his own memories. Artist Jung Yeon Min comments: "In my pictures nature is creatively reprocessed in such a way that you end up with a space where I myself would like to be." In the series Botanimal and Thousand Eyes Unkyung Hur presents the spectator with his personal perception of the world that is aesthetically close to a literary fantasy.

The aftershocks of the main trends of the 1980s and mindun misul ("art of the people") and the topic of Asia’s globalisation are reflected in the works of Sang Yung Kim and Kibeom Kwon. Sang Yung Kim’s sculptures include fragments of different historical buildings in Korea and East Asia, which have undergone changes over the past 50 years. In the video installation Crash Kibeom Kwon tries to document the erosion of boundaries between East and West, the impact of urbanization and the rapid growth of the economy.

The perfectionism inherent in South Korean art is particularly manifest in the paintings by Jongkyu Pak, who literally presents the "world as a code" and mimics it through images created through a graphic editor. His techniques include experiments with countless numbers of dots and lines where the pixel becomes the main structural element. The application of new technologies, the dominance of mechanisms over consciousness — these are all the underlying prototypes of the objects and total installations of one of the brightest representatives of kinetic art, U-Ram Choe.

curators
Kristina Romanova
Sofya Simakova

consultant
Elena Khokhlova

artists
Gyungsu An
Kibeom Kwon
Kisoo Kim
Sang Gyun Kim
Jung Yeon Min
J. PARK
Unkyung Hur
Yun Kyung Jeong
U-Ram Choe
Xooang Choi
Kyungchul Shin

Orgueil, Soif, Sieste et la Route
2014
Acrylic on canvas
130 × 97 cm

The perfectionism inherent in South Korean art is particularly manifest in the paintings by Jongkyu Pak, who literally presents the "world as a code" and mimics it through images created through a graphic editor. His techniques include experiments with countless numbers of dots and lines where the pixel becomes the main structural element. The application of new technologies, the dominance of mechanisms over consciousness — these are all the underlying prototypes of the objects and total installations of one of the brightest representatives of kinetic art, U-Ram Choe.

curators
Kristina Romanova
Sofya Simakova

consultant
Elena Khokhlova

artists
Gyungsu An
Kibeom Kwon
Kisoo Kim
Sang Gyun Kim
Jung Yeon Min
J. PARK
Unkyung Hur
Yun Kyung Jeong
U-Ram Choe
Xooang Choi
Kyungchul Shin