Venue: Gyeonggi Museum of modern art

Press release

Together with the Korea Foundation and the Kunsthalle Münster, the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art is co-organizing Irony and Idealism, a cultural exchange exhibition featuring contemporary art from South Korea and Germany.

Demonstrating current trends in contemporary art, eight artists from South Korea and Germany are presented who have been actively working beyond their national borders. The exhibition also shows how cultural exchange can be driven and achieved by public museums and institutions. The participating artists are Gimhongsok, Hwayeon Nam, Youngwhan Bae, and Jisan Ahn from Korea; and Michael van Ofen, Manfred Pernice, Björn Dahlem, and Yoon Jongsuk from Germany. They are displaying approximately 50 works spanning diverse genres including film, installation, sculpture, and painting. All of them are accomplished professionals who have been acclaimed as prominent representatives of the international circles, and this exhibition introduces both formative and new works. Based on the belief that only art exhibitions are able to visualize concepts inaccessible through academic or analytic approaches, this exhibition demonstrates how the artists express the ironies, contradictions, and contrasts that they experience in their daily lives. By tracing their multi-layered questions and investigations across spatiotemporal borders, this exhibition will elucidate the multiplicity of contemporary art as it replaces intangible concepts such as human desire, memory, peace, and the universe with artistic language and sensibilities.

This exhibition was born out of a proposal by Gregor Jansen, the Director of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Although the initial concept included only four German artists, it was developed into the current exhibition, Irony and Idealism, by expanding the exhibition theme with the Korean artists. Inaugurating at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Irony and Idealism will travel to the KF Gallery in Seoul and then on to Kunsthalle Münster.

- Artists: Gimhongsok, Hwayeon Nam, Bae Young-whan, Ahn Jisan, Michael van Ofen, Manfred Pernice, Björn Dahlem, Yoon Jongsuk

- Curator
Korea: Choi Eunju (Director, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art), Kim Yoonseo (Curator, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art)
Germany: Gregor Jansen (Director, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf), Gail Kirkpatrick (Director, Kunsthalle Münster)

+https://gmoma-en.ggcf.kr/archives/exhibit/irony-idealism