The Leeum Museum of Art, which had been closed for about a year and seven months, reopened in October 2021 with a vision of being a more sustainable and inclusive art museum. The museum will continue to hold exhibitions that shed light on major artists and important themes, encompassing a wide spectrum of contemporary trends in 2023. 

Leeum, which houses a wide art collection from traditional Korean art to contemporary art, will be holding solo exhibitions of Kim Beom, one of the mid-career contemporary artists in Korea, and Suki Seokyeong Kang, an important Korean artist, to give a multilayered view of their artworks.

Kim Beom’s solo exhibition will be held from July to November 2023. The exhibition will be one of the artist’s largest retrospective solo exhibitions and will cover the world of his works for about 30 years, from the 1990s to the present. Kim uses a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, video, and installation, to add a humorous, irreverent approach to everyday objects. His works allow us to look at the world from a new perspective, breaking away from socially learned stereotypes and further revealing the fictitiousness of images in our daily lives. For example, in An Iron in the Form of a Radio, a Kettle in the Form of an Iron, and a Radio in the Form of a Kettle (2002), as the title explains, the function of each object is switched. And in the video work Spectacle (2010), the artist edited a television program to create a scene in which an antelope chases a cheetah. As such, his works suggest a new way of thinking by overturning the familiar order of the world.

Kim Beom (b. 1963) was the recipient of the Seoknam Art Prize (1996) and the second Hermès Foundation Missulsang (2001). He has participated in the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale and the eighth Istanbul Biennale and held numerous solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad. His works are included in numerous museum collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Houston Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Seoul Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Suki Seokyeong Kang’s works encompass sculpture, painting, video, installation, and performance to decipher dominant rules and values. She turns these rules into an artistic language, constructing a context to explore current concepts of individuality and freedom. Her work is also a record of emotions and thoughts created through certain abstract patterns. Kang brings various everyday objects and lays them on top of one another to find a balanced form or paints with repeated brush strokes to find a pattern between rules, emotions, and colors. Her works also incorporate texts and literature to convey certain thoughts and philosophical notions in her works.

Suki Seokyeong Kang (b. 1977), who majored in oriental painting, has held solo exhibitions globally, including in Korea, Taiwan, the United States, and Luxembourg. Kang has participated in various group exhibitions held at institutions including the Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, 2022), the Pace Gallery (New York, 2021), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, 2021), and Arario Gallery (Cheonan, 2020). Her works were featured in the main exhibition of the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016). Kang won the 13th SONGEUN Art Award (2013).

Ho-Am Art Museum, an affiliated institution of the Samsung Foundation of Culture together with the Leeum Museum of Art, will hold a collection exhibition introducing Leeum’s major collections, from postwar to contemporary art, from September 2023. In addition, prior to Leeum’s collection exhibition, a large-scale retrospective of artist Kim Whanki, a pioneer of Korean abstract art, will be held in Ho-Am from April 2023.

References

• 리움미술관(the Leeum Museum of Art)
• 삼성문화재단(the Samsung Foundation of Culture)