The Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (Gyeonggi MoMA) holds an exhibition of paintings in a turbulent era of Korean art as a special event. Distinctive from other exhibitions planned by Gyeonggi MoMA, this is an experimental exhibit based on the Korean modern art. The works on display would be classic differentiated from the established experimental contemporary art. Yet, they are the starting point of the Korean modern art, and it is true that they are situated in an important place as textbook works of art in the history of Korean art. They divide artists into the left and right domains in history, and their evaluations have been left out due to a perspective (political) difference. In fact, it is not unusual not to care about the periodic difference of the perspective since these are phenomena occurring in the structure of contemporary Korean society. Currently, the artists forming the basis of contemporary art from 1950s to 1990s are newly interpreted by political power, or the evaluation beyond periodic perspective sheds new light on them.

This special exhibition of Gyeonggi MoMA presents the artists re-evaluated historically in this context, and the works of post-ideological assessment away from left and right ideologies. This would be an opportunity to see actual works of generational art textbooks from an audience point of view, and further a trigger to identify the central art classified between generations. In practice, it would be concerned about why the works appeared in the intergenerational textbooks have other aspects, why there has been no intrinsic assessment to them. The fact that the works as the center of Korean art once have been covered by political ideologies and re-assessed under the name of new artists again represents the reality which Korea of a divided country could not but take.

It is not too much to say that the works standing for a turbulent era in Korean art are the focal point of the contemporary art market. What are the criteria of so-called bestselling expensive works? Why is the general public crazy about such works? Perhaps talking about these issues is evident in their numerical limits, excluding a certain domain (left and right logic, the colonial view of history) in the history of Korean art. Besides, modern art in a rapid development is less acclaimed by the public but more illegible like dyslexia. The general public expresses their natural intention in the most likely to be art, in beauty (aesthetic value) of the fundamental objective of art. While contemporary artworks are organized to be conceptual and with developing biographical narratives of artists rather than talking a number of stories subject to direct delivery of images, it is the main reason to gain a great response that modern art is faithful to the basics to transmit universal landscape or emotions.

Focusing on the artworks of a turbulent era collected by a private collector (anonymous), this special exhibition of Gyeonggi MoMA would be an instrument to confirm the scene of the Korean art history with intimate paintings to the audience. Most of all, I would like to thank the collector who is willing to present the collection to the special exhibition, and hope this to be a chance to see the root of Korean modern art with eyes. Furthermore, I really appreciate the masters of Korean art who have embodied the basic aesthetic emotions rather than any art-historical or political assessment.

*image (left)
© Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art