Bahc Yiso founded ‘Minor Injury’ in New York in 1985 and served as its director until 1989. After returning to Korea in 1995, he took up a position a professor at SADI which had recently opened. He presented his works in a number of major national and international exhibitions including Gwangju Biennale (1997) and Yokohama Triennale (2001). In 2002, he won the Hermès Korea Missulsang and was participated in the Korean Pavilion at Venice Biennale as a representative artist of Korea.
A biennale refers to an international art
exhibition held every two years. Since the establishment of the Venice Biennale
in 1895, more than a century has passed, and today over one hundred
biennales—including Korea’s Gwangju Biennale, which has a history of just over
a decade—have emerged and disappeared around the world as both entertainment
industries and tourist commodities disseminating contemporary art. Although
critical voices questioning the so-called “international biennale syndrome” are
growing louder, the biennale has by now become both a trend and a form of power
within the art world.
Venice, the city of water that gave birth
to the biennale, will once again transform this summer into a global platform
drawing people together through art. Opening on June 14 and running through
November 2, the 2003 Venice Biennale marks the historic milestone of its 50th
edition. The artistic director of this fiftieth Venice Biennale, Francesco
Bonami (Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago), has set the
theme of the main exhibition as ‘Dreams and Conflicts.’
The title of this year’s exhibition by
Korean artists at the Korean Pavilion in the Giardini of Venice is ‘Landscape
of Differences.’ Commissioner Kim Hong-hee (Director of Ssamzie Space) has
reinterpreted ‘conflict’ as ‘difference,’ and ‘dream’ as ‘landscape.’ The three
participating artists—WHANG Inkie, Bahc Yiso, and Chung Seoyoung—present works
that explore differences between art and nature, or between interior spaces and
exterior views.
Making use of the architectural conditions
of the Korean Pavilion, the exhibition centers on a spatial inversion that
draws Venice’s coastal scenery into the exhibition space while extending the
artworks outward beyond the building.
The artists departed for Venice in mid-May
and, with just a week remaining before the opening, are busily completing the
installation of their works. Upon entering the main entrance of the Korean
Pavilion, a refreshing waterscape unfolds through the glass wall directly
ahead, and to its right spreads WHANG Inkie’s Like a Breeze.
This 28-meter-long large-scale mural,
composed of black discarded vinyl and fragments of acrylic mirrors, juxtaposes
traditional East Asian landscape painting with the contemporary reality of
Venice, forming a double landscape.
Chung Seoyoung installed a fake ‘column’
made of white Styrofoam onto the existing iron pillar in the recessed space on
the left. She also cut a doorway into the wall and mounted a mid-sized
motorcycle—converted with a two-wheeled cart attached at the rear—entitling the
work ‘A New Life.’
Bahc Yiso satirizes the biennale itself, a
symbol of cultural hegemony, with his work Venice Biennale
installed in the front courtyard of the Korean Pavilion. On a temporary ring
structure made of square wooden beams, he arranges small-scale models of 26
national pavilions, humorously depicting the politics of the biennale.
