MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2019: Park Chan-kyong
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- MMCA HYUNDAI MOTOR SERIES 2019: CHAN-KYONG PARK - GATHERING
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MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, hosted by the MMCA and sponsored by Hyundai Motor Company, is a ten-year art project that organizes an annual exhibition of established artists. This project aims to introduce the current state of Korean contemporary art and its dynamic practices to a wide range of audiences.
50th
Anniversary
Hyundai Motor Company is one of the most committed supporters of contemporary arts and culture globally through decade-long partnerships with various museums. One of these is the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, which aims to introduce the current state of Korean contemporary art through multiple outlets such as painting, sculpture, film, and other dynamic practices while sharing the story behind each piece and initiate discussion between a wide range of audiences. Hosted by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and sponsored by Hyundai Motor, the ten-year project, MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, started in 2014 to support one established Korean artist every year in putting together a solo exhibition of new works.
MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2019: Chan-Kyong Park - Gathering
Starting from Lee Bul, selected in the inaugural year of 2014, the series has features the artists Ahn Kyuchul (2015), Kimsooja (2016), Im Heung-soon(2017), Choi Jeong Hwa(2018) to much acclaim, reinforcing their presence in Korean and international art scenes.
The artist for the 6th annual MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2019, Park Chan-kyong, had contemplated on the meaning of “community” uniquely for a long time, while thoroughly researching the theme systematically. Being active as well as a critic, film director, curator, and photographer, the artist had also shown excellence in various fields such as creating an artist duo PARKing CHANce with film director Park Chan-wook.
“Gathering-pleasure” : the value of community
of non-benefit and non-purpose.
The present exhibition titled Gathering showcases Park’s representative work Belated Bosal, eight new works include Small Museum of Art; Fukushima, Autoradiography; Barefoot, Gallery 5 and so forth, along with one existing work, Sets. The exhibition takes on the Structure of a mise en abyme frame narrative. Installed near the entrance is Small Museum of Art, which functions as the exhibition’s self-reflective frame. The work raises the question as to whether or not our familiarity with art history and museums stems from an artificially indoctrinated framework. Park continues his critique and contemplation of art institutions in works touching upon the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Siddhartha Gautama’s nirvana, and others created under the theme “Post-Disaster.”
Artist Park Chan-kyong
Park Chan-kyong is an artist who has attracted the attention of the domestic and international art world for his work on film, installations, and photography with the theme of Cold War, divison of Korea, folk religion, and modernity of East Asia. Park Chan-kyong is born in Seoul (1965) and has lived in the city. He had majored in Painting at the College of Fine Arts but after graduation, he has mainly written about art and curated exhibitions. His first solo exhibition in 1997 was titled Black Box: Memory of the Cold War Images. From this show on, Park had dealt with the theme of the division of the Korean peninsula and the Cold War, amid relations with mass media or interests of politics and psychology. He worked mainly through photograph and video, such as Sets (2000), Power Passage (2004), Flying (2005), and Believe It Or Not (2018).
After presenting his exhibition, Sindoan, in 2008, he directed his focus on topics of traditional Korean folk religion, shamanism, and the modernity of Korea through his filmography. These themes continued in his later pieces: Anyang, Paradise City (2010), Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (2013), Citizen’s Forest (2016) and Child Soldier (2017-2018). Not only being active as an artist, Park has also written essays on artists, art institutions, Minjung art, modernism, post-modernism and tradition. Park has been awarded the Hermès Foundation Missulsang (2004), the Golden Bear for Best Short Film of the Berlin International Film Festival 2011). He had also curated the exhibition SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul 2014, Ghosts, Spies, and Grandmothers.
For me, such naïve stories are possible only in art; thus, the “museum” with quotation marks, could probably be one of the few places of hope that remains in today’s world. PARK CHAN-KYONG
After viewing the exhibition, visitors can reflect on their history once again, and finally reflect on their own lives through various voices of the society people live in. Hyundai Motor hopes to broaden the horizon of Korean contemporary art by presenting Park’s new works ‘Gathering’ that engage in deep-researching discourse while traversing media and genres.
MMCA Motor Series 2019: Park Chan-Kyong - Gathering
Additionally, we would like to invite you to join us for our MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2020 featuring Haegue Yang with the theme O₂ & H₂O. The exhibition opens on September 29th, 2020 and will run through February 28th, 2021. To find out more, please visit here.