Believe Pinhole Photograph and National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea

Pinhole photograph of Believe, Brother One Feather’s Van in Santa Barbara, California
*****

On Saturday I went to the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul.  At the exit 4 subway station, not only is there a bus to the museum, there is also a Camera Museum with a Pinhole Truck outside! I’ll definitely be taking a trip back to peruse that museum.  The bus speeds along a curvy road forcing you to hold on for dear life, unless of course you like being thrown from side to side in a moving vehicle. We passed by an amusement park, a zoo, an arboretum and a sky lift.  Surrounding the museum is a beautiful sculpture garden.

I mainly explored 2 exhibits -  Peppermint Candy:  Contemporary Art from Korea in Seoul and their permanent exhibit “The more, the better” by artist Nam June Paik in their ‘Ramp Core’ which is eerily similar to the Guggenheim, only exceptionally smaller.

I thoroughly enjoyed Peppermint Candy, my first encounter delving into contemporary Korean art. I wrote down the names of these artists for further exploration:

Yongbaek Lee – Angel Soldier, 2005 Hidden in a repeating floral pattern on a wall sized print were camouflaged soldiers. The photograph was accompanied by a film, where you could see the shadows of the soldiers creeping along.  Quiet… Peaceful… Haunting…

Sungsoo Koo – Magical Reality Fanciful scenes of randomness and nice strong patterns.  There’s a great article posted on his website if you have the time to read it.

Jung-Hwa Choi – Ladies and Gentlemen   I wish I could find some information on this artist. I was immediately smitten with this piece.  An installation of religious icons wearing cartoon masks, Hello Kitty to Darth Vader. The room was wallpapered in tin foil and random colorful neon lights were strewn about.  I snuck a photograph.

Oh Inhwan – Where a man meets a man in Seoul The smell of wonderful hippies filled the gallery and I found the source in the back in a piece that captivated me. The artist spelled out hundreds of words in Korean and English in a slow burning incense.  You could watch the words burn revealing their message.  An interesting way to deal with homosexuality indeed.

To view all the photographs from the Museum, click here.