A lecture was held on Korean art’s strategy to enter the overseas art market. Next Academy, a training program for international exchange of Korea Arts Management Service, provided a lecture series with intern ally and externally active critics and art market experts to the art practicians under the title of the Six Gazes on Art Market (November 11th to 24th, at the book seminar room of Dongdaemun Design Plaza). Park Man-woo, the director of Platform-L Contemporary Art Center, spoke on the task and prospect of Korean Art going overseas. Park looked back at past advances in Korean contemporary art to the world with the socioeconomic circumstances of the time and the major events of the art scene. Park also proposed the issue of adapting to the present situation of change.

Video artist Paik Nam-june’s artwork, Global Groove (1974), predicted the next destination of contemporary art with surprising insight. In this video work, Japanese Fuji TV’s Nissan Bluebird and Pepsi commercial, Korean Janggu dance, American tap dance, cello playing and native African group dance are presented with altered images from the video synthesizer, which Paik invented. At that time the concept of cultural relativity and multiculturalism were not familiar to the audience of U.S. This work implicated the message that the difference of language, religion, race and culture can be understood and acknowledged by the excitement and groove of music to coexist harmoniously.

How Does Contemporary Art Acquire the Global Vision?

In academia, cultural studies has criticized the cultural imperialism of U.S and the western oriented tradition of visual culture, and influenced the emergence of methodology of New Art History. This view has also emerged in art institutions, which focus on the artists from the regions that have been considered as periphery. Institute of International Visual Art in London (INIVA, 1994), Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1968/1987), and El Museo del Barrio (1970) are the representative establishments. However, the decisive role to multi-polarize and de-centralize western hold on visual art was played out by the phenomenon of establishing international contemporary art biennales, except Venice Biennale with 100 years of tradition and the Mecca of Western contemporary art, Kassel Documenta. Though still Eurocentric, we could count in Lyon Biennale in France, which established in 1991 and proposed the global aspect under the subject, L’Autre, in 1997, with the legendary curator, Harald Szeemann. In the regions that have been called the Third World, the major scale international contemporary art exhibitions were continuously emerged and imitated the formality of biennales. In 1992, the 3rd Istanbul Biennale, which was established in 1987, raised the multiculturalism discourse under the subject, Production of Cultural Difference, with the curator Vasif Kortun. By this time, Johannesburg Biennale in South Africa emerged, but from the point of view of Korean contemporary art, it is hard to find more important incident than the establishment of Gwangju Biennale in 1995 in the history of biennale.

However, we need have an economic point of view on this cultural phenomenon of the continuous establishment of huge biennales out of North America and Western Europe but in the periphery. In the art scene, the economic point of view can be translated into the logic of development of the art market. In 1991, the Gulf War broke out as Iraq invaded Kuwait, and serious financial crisis was followed in the international economic world. As the result, the art market in Western Europe and North America faced a severe contraction from 1991 to 1993. For example, there were hundreds of commercial galleries in Paris, which for small proportion experienced overnight closures. One solution to this state of crisis was to secure a third place to expand the consumption market of contemporary art. Furthermore, there was the need to find the fresh creative base to supply the new art product. Like Venice Biennale and Art Basel, the boom towns in Asia rapidly hosted the biennales and art fairs to renew the brand image of the city.

Korean Contemporary Art Enters the Global Scene

When we observe the process of Korean contemporary art's entrance onto the global art scene, we notice that globalization is not a one-way process but rather a mutual conversation. In this sense, Whitney Biennale's Seoul tour exhibition in 1993 played unprecedented role, and Paik Nam-june made an eccentric contribution to make this historical event to happen. Paik met David Ross, the director of Whitney Museum at that time, in person and suggested to move the whole 1993 Whitney Biennale to National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, in his own expense. The exhibition was curated by Elisabeth Sussman and presented the peak of multiculturalist discourse. Through this exhibition, Korean audiences could discover that the contemporary issues of the social life around them are featured by the unfamiliar artistic medium, such as video art and installation. Over 200,000 people visited the event, which the record is the highest of all contemporary art exhibitions.

Taking 1993 Whitney Biennial in Seoul as the momentum, Korean art figures and policy makers planned to establish the large scale international contemporary art biennales, including 1995 Gwangju Biennials, 2000 Busan Biennale and Seoul Media City in the same year. The major curators, artists, critics and art journalists of the international art scene could meet the local artists of Korea at these biennales .The artists themselves could also contextualize their work from not only within a North American and Western European artist framework, but also within the context of South American and Eastern European artists.

Other than the settlement of biennale culture in Korea, the channels to communicate with international art scene for Korean artists were provided in various forms. From the point of view of the history of exhibition, in 1999 Luis Camnitzer and Jane Farver produced Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin (1950-1980), at Queens Museum of Art, in New York, and in the exhibition Seong Wan Kyoung, Korean art critic, curated the section, From local context: conceptual art in South Korea, and introduced the key artists of Minjung Art, which is a politically engaged art movement of Korea. Also, in 2000, at Artsonje, David Ross, the director of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at that time, presented KOREAMERICAKOREA, which raised the critical view on cultural identity in relation to multicultural discourse. The exhibition invited Korean American artists including Suh Do-ho, Michael Joo, Byron Kim, Theresa Hak-kyung Cha and Kwon So-won and the subject of Korean contemporary art and diaspora was continued to THERE: Sites of Korean Diaspora, which is a project of Gwangju Biennale 2002 and realized by Min Yong-soon, Korean American artist.

Minor Injury, Brooklyn, the Alternative Space Ran by Bahc Yiso

It is very interesting that Korean American artists and artists who have studied and been making art in U.S had a leading role for Korean art to enter the global art scene. Um Hyuk is an immigrant to Canada and a curator, who studied in New York and now a design exhibition curator. He also closely communicated with the group of young critics and artists (Research Society for Art Criticism) in Seoul in early 1990s. For example, it was Um who introduced Bahc Yiso to Research Society for Art Criticism. Bahc studied in New York since 1982 and was active as an artist and curator till 1994, as well as ran the alternative space, Minor Injury, in Brooklyn. Kwon Miwon, an art historian in American residence, took part in introducing Korean artists to the world, such as contributing the criticism on early Suh Doho’s work to the symposium of KOREAMERICAKOREA in Artsonje. Later Joo Eungie, who is former director of REDCAT in L.A and worked with New Museum in New York, Chong Doryun, the curator of Hong Kong M+ and worked with Walker Art Center and MoMA in New York, and Clara Kim, worked with REDCAT and Walker Art Center, energetically introduced Korean artists including Mixrice, Park Chan-kyong, Bae Young-whan, Yang Hae-gue, Yim Heung-soon and Lim Min-ouk to the major museums and biennales. Their role as the cultural interpreter suggests many points to ponder to the future advance of Korean artists.

Presently, the artworks by Lee Bul, Kim Sooja, Suh Doho, Chang Young-hae Heavy Industries, Choi Jeong-wha, Yang Hae-gue and Kim Sung-hwan have been frequently shown at the exhibitions of major international museums. Many other young Korean artists are also receiving growing attention from the global art scene. One of the primary reasons, except the biennale and international exchange exhibition, is the core infrastructure for Korean contemporary art including National Museum of Contemporary Art, Artsonje Center, Leeum and the international residency and creative center. These institutions support the future prospect and possibility of Korean contemporary art to be highly evaluated. The artists of former generations might choose to go overseas to get a more comprehensive appraisal of their capabilities and to find more exposure. However, the situation of global contemporary art scene has vastly changed. Museums, commercial galleries and curators of Europe and U.S are taking notice of young Korean artists, and often make a research tour to Korea and pay the visit to the ateliers. I think this is the first time that Korean art draws such an attention. Maybe the primary task is not to heatedly promote the local artists to abroad but to excavate the brilliant artists “right here” and furnish the soil to nurture them to grow strongly. Because the opportunity seldom comes. It is the crucial time for the museum, critic, curator and commercial gallery to objectively introspect whether they perform their original duties.