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A Report of Art Critic Support Program 2018-2019 Critical Writings on Korean Contemporary Art Critical Writings on Korean Contemporary Art A Report of Art Critic Support Program 2018-2019 Critical Writings on Korean Contemporary Art What Does a Biennale Do? Exhibition Reviews Contents A Review of the 2019 Cheongju Craft Biennale Seo Juno _ 100 The Opening Ceremony of the Seoul Olympics and Cosmopolitanism Eom Jehyeon _ 112 Introduction: Overlooking the Korean Art Criticism Baek Jihong _ 006 “New Painting”: “Painting in Crisis” Media Study theory as a point of departure A Critical Note on the Direction and Tendencies Ban Ejung _ 136 of Korean Art Criticism 2018–2019 Michael Lim _ 014 A Landscape as a poison: Praxis of Landscape in Independent Documentaries Lee Do Hoon _ 152 From Net Art to Post-Internet Art: Open Possibilities of Post-Internet Art Nathalie Boseul Shin _ 168 Listen to Citizens, Listen to Stories, Artist Analysis Listen to the City I will not live the way you want: Theory Study Park Juwon _ 030 Thoughts on relation between Screen, Gender, and Visual Arts Narrative and Image: Kim Shin Sik _ 182 The Living and the Dead Lee Nara _ 046 Representations/Machines/Objects as the World: Recent movements in Korean Voice of the “MTV Generation”: Contemporary Art Early Video Work of Sejin Kim Jeung Gangsan _ 198 Mun Hye Jin _ 060 Nonlinearity of Meaning and Structure Exploring the Emergence of Dansaekhwa: outside Structure The Works of Park Seobo Jung Hoon _ 218 Kim Han deul _ 074 Hwang Yong Yop and the Variations Looking Back on the 21st Century from the 21st Century: on Human Anguish Criticism as a Witness of the 21st Century An Jaeyoung _ 088 Mun Hye Jin _ 234 Introduction: What is the position that art criticism occupies? In truth, there is no need for it to be restricted to art—in every field, the position of “criticism” is not fixed, Overlooking the Korean Art Criticism but fluid and uncertain. The prerequisites of criticism, which depend on a crit- ical subject, give rise sometimes to claims of criticism’s “pointlessness.” In cases Baek Jihong such as films, popular music, or cartoons that have a large audience, this leads to attacks on the expertise of critics, as people ask the question, “Just what is the difference between me and a critic?” In areas where the art form itself has a smaller audience—such as fine arts, literature, or dance—the readership for criticism is so small as to veer toward pointlessness or survive solely as the “di- alect” of an insular community. Art criticism likewise faces questions about its utility. Not only does criticism no longer possess the power it once held to select “good art,” but its readers are a very limited bunch. Yet criticism is still needed wherever creativity is practiced. Just as artistic creation and exhibition planning are influenced by criticism, so criticism functions as a part of a virtuous cycle that leads to the emergence of better exhibitions and artwork as it influences artistic creation. Moreover, artwork tends to be quickly forgotten when it does not survive in records, and criticism offers the most exemplary means of record- ing art. Good criticism is still necessary for good art. The Art Critic Support Program launched by the Korea Arts Management Service(KAMS) since 2018 which aims to produce of good criticism. As the pro- gram title suggests, its distinguishing feature is making a pair of critics and art mamazine—an apt approach, in that criticism can only perform its role when media are promoted as channels for its circulation. When support is being pro- vided to an art world that has lost its own momentum for perpetuating the cycle amid a collapse of the art market, some element of design is needed to keep the cycle going, however artificially. A total of 76 manuscripts were written as a result, and KAMS has com- piled the reports of its program into a book titled Critical Writings on Kore- an Contemporary Art : A report of the 2018–2019 Art Critic Support Program, 006 007 which includes 14 of those texts along with one newly written one. The individ- uscripts fall under more than one of those topics, we hope the reader will not ual manuscripts differ in character, as no conditions were stipulated for partic- dwell too much on arbitrary categories assigned after the fact. The moments ipation in the matching project; indeed, it may be a bit of a stretch for them to spent reading should be all about the dialogue between reader and writer. be compiled into a single volume. The differences are not limited to diversity in topics or approaches. For instance, the critical texts that are recorded in the lim- The first text that greets the reader is Michael Lim’s “A Critical Note on the ited pages of print media opted for an approach of delving deeply into a single Direction and Tendencies of Korean Art Criticism 2018–2019,” which is the only topic despite the larger-than-average space, whereas the online media, which text that was newly written for this collection. Examining the state of Korean art are typically more or less untroubled by space issues, ambitiously attempted to criticism over the two years of the program in terms of the topics of “alternative tackle topics as vast as their footnotes are voluminous. This difference is but one channels and programs,” “exceptional critics,” and “(areas for improvement in) small example of the sourcebook’s diversity. Each author anticipated a different academic society-centered research activities,” it is written in a quite accessible level of readership, and the texts are not uniform in terms of difficulty. Texts that way despite its diversity of content and is well-suited as a “warm-up” for the are easily readable by anyone with an interest in art are compiled alongside ones next 13 texts with its examination of the current conditions and position of that require readers to dig in their heels and unpack each individual sentence. contemporary Korean art criticism. Reading this book in one sitting would be like traveling on a bumpy road—by no means a comfortable experience. The ensuing section on “Artist Analysis” accounts for the largest number If anything, however, it is that very diversity that is responsible for this of texts, five in total, and illustrates all the different aspects that the kind of sourcebook’s unique significance—an illustration of the overall state of Korean criticism often referred to as “artist theory” can assume. Among the five artist art criticism circa 2018–2019 that no other critical collection can boast. Art theory works included here, Park Juwon’s “Listen to Citizens, Listen to Stories, criticism is not an especially large field, yet there are critics who never cross Listen to the City” is the closest to the artists. It shares the work of the Listen to paths in their activities, whether it is because of the media through which their the City collective, whose members capture the voices of people victimized by criticism circulates, the generations of the critics themselves and their subjects, state-led development projects such as the redevelopment of Seoul’s Cheong- or the artistic genres that the criticism focuses upon. This collection focuses on gyecheon Stream, the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project, Okbaraji Alley, and the full range of criticism fields present in Korean art today (although it may the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang; as a text, it expresses the writer’s passion- still be missing a few), and this is what enables it to provide vision of Korean art ate support for what the artists are attempting to achieve. In contrast, Lee Nara’s criticism. “Narrative and Image: The Living and the Dead” is a more subdued introduction The most difficult points in editing the book was tying together all of that to the artistic world of Song Sang-hee, basing its discussion on the ideas of diversity—however roughly—under a handful of topics. As mentioned before, it Georges Didi-Huberman, one of the most noted thinkers in the Korean cultural would have been a discourtesy to readers to simply lump together texts of such world of the 2010s. In addition to aiding in an understanding of Song’s artistic different character. So we took the risk of categorizing each of them under one vision, it is also meaningful as a record of the contemporary critical climate. of four major topics (“Artist Analysis,” “Exhibition Reviews,” “Media Study,” and Mun Hye Jin’s “Voice of the “MTV Generation”: Early Video Work of Sejin “Theory Study”) to provide some minimal guide. Given that some of the man- Kim” convincingly charts the changes in Kim Sejin’s artistic body of work as 008 009 it explores how the Korean video art of the late 1990s to the early and mid- of visual arts created in Korea in 1988. Summoning back the grandeur of a cer- 2000s was influenced by the transformation in cultural history terms as the new emony held over 30 years ago, the writer is scathing in his criticism of an event medium of cable TV was applied to the public. An art history-based approach orchestrated by the military administration to inspire patriotic sentiments and is more strongly emphasized in Kim Han Deul’s “Exploring the Emergence of usher Korea into the ranks of “advanced nations.” Dansaekhwa: The Works of Park Seobo,” which introduces the artistic oeuvre of the preeminent artist Park Seobo based on research into dansaekhwa(Korean The media and genre in which art is situated are also critical targets, for monochrome), one of the most oft-studied genres in Korean art history during they are not value-neutral presences, but ones whose meaning changes with the the 2010s.

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