The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon is pleased to announce the exhibition Choi Man-lin. This is the second exhibition of Korean Contemporary Artists Series and the first sculpture exhibition of the series, which has been organized in the museum’s efforts to establish the research basis in Korean art history. As a retrospective shedding light on the 60 years of art career of the senior sculptor Choi Man-lin (b. 1935), the exhibition presents approximately 200 of his representative sculptural works and drawings that span from 60 years of his artistic career, from late 1950s to 2013.

The exhibition takes a thorough look into Choi’s oeuvre, starting with the figurative sculpture titled Eve which was praised as the artist’s debut work in the 1960s. The exhibition also displays the calligraphy-inspired work Sky, Earth, Black and Yellow from the late 1960s which explores the roots of Korean sculpture, as well as The Placenta series from 1970s-80s which conceptualizes Choi’s interest in the subject of life. After the 90s, Choi’s thought revert to a more fundamental form in his series titled O. This exhibition demonstrates how ideas like life, origin, and root unfold sculpturally according to changes in time. Of particular note, the plaster positive form prior to the bronze casting is exhibited alongside the finished works in the large sculpture series The Placenta and O, giving the audience a more complete experience of the artist’s art practice.

Choi Man-lin is an artist of the last existing generation that went through Korea’s turbulent modern time including Japanese colonial period and Korean War. He is also of the first generation that studied in a domestic art institution established in Korea after the liberation. Choi ceaselessly strove throughout his entire life to solve the problem of balance in the ruptured continuation of tradition and modernity. He also constructed his own unique artistic language through self-introspection and continuous contemplation on the identity of Korean sculpture. Choi has dedicated himself to the progress of Korean sculpture, as a long-time artist, educator and administrator in the field of sculpture, which has a relatively insubstantial basis compared to painting.

The exhibition Choi Man-lin of Korean Contemporary Artists Series casts a new light on an artist who strove to construct his own unique artistic language in the sculpture field — which is a relatively minor field compared to painting and other mainstream genres — and work hard to foster the younger generation and advance Korean sculpture. As a special sculpture exhibition held in 4 years, this exhibition hopes to contribute in revitalizing the sculpture field.

Korean Contemporary Artists Series is a 3-year exhibition program which features 22 solo exhibitions by artists in diverse fields including painting, photography, architecture and craft. The painting exhibition Cho Pyunghwi is currently being held from March 25th to July 6th, 2014.

*image (left)
© Choi Man Lin
courtesy of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art