Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

In 2000, Insa Art Space held his first solo exhibition 《Shrine》(2000, Insa Art Space, Seoul, Korea). The exhibition was held through a public contest, and the previously unknown artist officially debuted in the art scene through this exhibition.

He is a young artist who is looking for a clear world of his own, and is beginning to attract attention for the high quality of his work.

In a solo exhibition held to commemorate the re-opening of the Arko Art Museum in 2005, he presented a new type of series called 《Funkchestra》 (2005, Arko Art Museum, Seoul, Korea).

Previously, the theme of everyday objects(books, pencils, pens, etc.) was the theme of the ‘Funkchestra’ series. The vibrations and melody of the sound from the speaker are expressed in color and format, and celebrities, symbols, and texts are combined.

The artist also participated in the residency program at Doosan Gallery New York, where he held 《Pens》(2010, Doosan Gallery, New York, USA). In the current exhibition, he presents two large-scale oil paintings from his Pen series, in which he uses bundle of pens and pencils packed closely together laid out in fantastic colorful fantasy settings. Hong began this particular work titled Pen3 in 2000, and he has been working on it on and off for a decade. This is the first time this piece is being shown in public.

In 2019, the exhibition 《Great Obsession》(2019, Indang Museum, Daegu, Korea) was held. This exhibition was a small retrospective exhibition covering the entire world of Kyoung Tack Hong’s work from the early days of his work to that time. 59 pieces from the artist’s collection, along with the ‘Pen’ ‘Library’ ‘Funkchestra’ and ‘Hand’ series were exhibited.

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

The artist participated in the group exhibition 《In Commemoration of the 15th Anniversary of the Amity between Korea and China Contemporary Art : Wonderland 》(2007, National Museum of Art, Beijing, China), which was held in 2007 to promote Korean contemporary art abroad.

This exhibition was organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea and selected promising artists from Korea at the time. We introduced 41 works of artists who are still active, including Hong Kyoungtack, Gwon Osang, Lee Hyeong-goo, and Choi U-ram.

In the same year, he participated in the exhibition 《Peppermint Candy : Contemporary Art from Korea》 held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile. Through this exhibition, the artist’s name became known not only in Asia but also in South America.

In 2012, Doosan Gallery participated in the exhibition to commemorate the reopening. In this exhibition, works by Doosan Residency New York artists from 2009 to 2011 were presented. Representative Korean artists who are actively working at home and abroad were selected and they were able to discuss their world of work in depth.

In addition, 《Korea, Japan Contemporary Art》 (2005, Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul, Korea), 《Wall Screen Project: Funkchestra in Motion 》 (2013, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea), 《Digi Fun Art: Urban Space》 (2015, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea), 《Before the Beginning After the End》 (2016, K Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, Korea), 《A different Similarity》 (2009, Central Istanbul Art Museum, Istanbul, Turkey) etc. Participated in several group exhibitions held at home and abroad.

Awards (Selected)

The artist was awarded the ‘14th LEEINSUNG Art Prize’ in 2013. Hong Kyoungtack as the youngest recipient of the award, the artist is active both at home and abroad, and has been evaluated as an artist with the ability to lead the contemporary art world in Korea. The judges highly appreciated that it opened up a new possibility of post-photo painting with a combination of design and painting, pop art and realism, as well as universality that everyone can sympathize with.

Collections (Selected)

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea), Ilmin Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea), Doosan Gallery (Seoul, Korea), Amorepacific (Seoul, Korea) other collections have been.

Originality & Identity

Hong Kyoungtack has been working on the subject of the obsessive desires of modernists for a long time with everyday materials such as pens, pencils, and books. The ‘pencil’ or ‘pen,’ which fills the canvas with fancy primary colours, is an object that “draws out the emptiness, which is a by-product of the momentary splendour, the objects of spying, the arrangement of childish and tactile objects, along with the erotic.”

His art material, ‘pen,’ may seem too simple, but the artist deals with modern people’s dual and obsessive desires with allegories of skulls and dolls appearing in the form of pen caps, a stacked screen composition, and the seriousness of writing mood.

The ‘Library’ series was inspired by Chaekado (fixed paintings of brush, paper, and ink) in the late Joseon Dynasty. The bookshelf, which seems to be closed, is filled with smooth texture books, single portraits, and icons of traditional paintings. Transforming the space of reclusive scholars in a modern way, the conflicting and multiplying desires of modern people are reflected in his artworks.

Hong Kyoungtack goes beyond the expression of desire through the lightness of the subject matter of everyday objects, and advances into works that talk about various attributes of life, such as life and death, religion and secularism.

A series of works under the title of ‘Funkchestra’, a compound word of funk and orchestra, are presented in color and black and white, pattern (abstract) and realism, in sexuality, closure and eruption, high culture and popular culture, painting and design, religion and pornography. It shows the advanced world of his work that crosses the art world.

Meanwhile, there exists a landscape in the artist’s works, such as < Reflection 1 >(2013) series and < Library-Golf course >(2014), and < Pens-six celestial bodies >(2014), in his solo exhibition 《Green Green Grass》 (Perigee Gallery, Seoul) held in 2014. As a formal concept, it is a typical form that he expresses with patterned objects like the universe and library.

However, the artist’s face and his studio are reflected in the golf iron, a pen is drawn on the top of the sky expressing concentric circles, and then the library and golf country club are mixed on a canvas. Hence, Hong Kyoungtack inquiries about the dimensions of time and space by overlapping spaces and shows a change in expressing the landscape as an object of human dreams and desires with non-artificial materials.

In addition, Hong Kyoungtack also introduced the ‘Monologue’ series depicting the sacred, the devil, and humanity; and the ‘Insect Collecting’ series concerning the pain of the contradiction of the machine and living creatures.

As Hong Kyoungtack mentions, “I want to portray the realities of our time, from religion to pornography,” the artist’s work is an artistic collection completing not only modern visual information with a pursuit of sense but existence and ambivalence.

Style & Contents

In the 1960s, the icons began to intervene in high cultural fine art from pop art. Therefore, Hong Kyoungtack records an influential Korean pop art due to the characteristics of brilliant primary colours and contrasting solid colours, rhythmic screen composition, and the use of daily materials.

However, the artist fulfills a too large spectrum to simply categorize him into the pop art genre. It would be appropriate to say that he is an artist who has responded to contemporaneity from a critical point of view by effectively mixing the genres of pop culture and art.

The configuration of inflammatory bold gothic fonts and realistic descriptions seen in ‘Funkchestra’ reminds us of the traditional poster format. Orthodox icons of Vanitas paintings, such as skulls and butterflies, often appear in his works. It suggests a connecting point with classic paintings.

Besides, it was presented as a video type work, for instance < Urban Symphony >(2016), or an installation work < Cocoon >(2007) filled with colour space. It was recomposed in collaborative work with a fashion designer and shown in the exhibition 《VOGUE: Fashion into Art》. Hence, Hong Kyoungtack steadily enters a new material and constructive engagement stage.

Topography & Continuity

The artist Hong Kyoungtack has grown along with the maturation of the Korean contemporary art world and domestic and international growth of the art market. The 2000s time when the global contemporary art market exploded, was also a proliferated period for the Korean art market.

At that time, domestic galleries were aggressively introducing Korean artists to overseas markets to advance international markets, and the artist was actively participating in leading auction and art fairs. Since his work < Pencil 1 > made a successful bid with the highest price for a Korean artist at Christie’s auction in Hong Kong in 2007, he got the most prominent attention from discerning collectors in the world art market.

In the early days of his work, Hong Kyoungtack mainly sold his works at overseas art fairs and auctions and exhibited specifically at art galleries in Korea, balancing commerce and art. However, since the artist was increasingly acknowledged for his popularity and quality, he established his solid foothold in the domestic market, participating in over 100 group exhibitions.

Hong Kyoungtack exhibited his art widely in the international art world, such as 《Korean Contemporary Art Russia》(2008, The Central House of Artists, Moscow, Russia), 《Korean Contemporary Art Tour to Latin America: Peppermint Candy》(2008, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, MNBA, Argentina), 《A Different Similarity》(2009, Santral Istanbul Art Museum, Istanbul, Turkey / 2010, Bergbau-Museum, Bochum, Germany).

The recent art activity of Hong Kyoungtack is more up-to-date and has been a bridge between pop culture and fine art. He also participated In the exhibition 《Art match-mashups: Convergence of art that meets AI and machine that learns art》(2021, YeongEun Art Museum, Seoul), which is collaborative work with deep learning of statement of AI and art of the artist styles.

Furthermore, Hong Kyoungtack presented NFT artworks and enlarged his art activities and artworks by participating 《Amulet: Awaking Tiger》 in the digital art sector.