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"Solar Activity Monitor" by British artist Marc Quinn is part of his solo exhibition at Gana Art Center. / Courtesy of Gana Art Center
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
This month, brace yourself for an invasion of British contemporary art in Seoul, with the solo exhibition of Marc Quinn at Gana Art Center and a group exhibition of well-known British artists such as Richard Hamilton, Charles Avery, David Mach and David Batchelor at Kukje Gallery.
Irony & Gesture
Kukje Gallery invited 11 British artists for its contemporary British art exhibition ``Irony & Gesture," which runs through Aug. 14.
``The artists invited for this exhibition are characterized not only by their strong personal vision and artistic practice, but also their strong understanding and exploration of the world around them. It is this understanding that imparts the clearer understanding of the gap that gives irony to their works that provide a truer vision of the world," curator Lee Ji-yoon said.
Three artists, David Batchelor, Richard Woods and Sam Buxton, were in Seoul last week to attend the exhibit opening.
The gallery floors are covered with Woods' work ``Logo no. 53 (color)" and ``Logo no. 54 (white)." ``The idea behind the logo series is wooden floors. Basically both act as a logo to themselves and they operate on their own graphic level. … I like wooden floors because the pattern doesn't repeat," Woods told reporters.
For his ``Parapillar" series, Batchelor created a work of steel stands with different plastic objects he bought from British pound stores.
``All objects attached are plastic, and all came from one pound shops where nothing costs more than one pound. These shops are universal in every country whether its one euro or one dollar. All these plastic materials come from the same place, China. … All of these works belong to a larger project that looks at the city and how to find color. I find places where color is experienced and find out what kinds of colors are there," Batchelor said.
In the installation ``I Ever Experienced This Comfort," Buxton created a mini-city made of acid-etched, laser-cut flat stainless steel. Buxton, whose background is mainly in design, said he created the design using a computer and then sent it to a factory for them to print it out on flat steel.
The thin, delicate steel piece is then unfolded into a 3-D replica of tiny cityscapes featuring airport check-in counters, supermarket aisles, trees, cars and buildings. Buxton said he created the piece specially for Kukje Gallery and is his most ambitious, biggest work to date. It took him over four days just to unfold the design from the steel sheet at the gallery.
Also on display are ``Soft Pink Landscape" by Richard Hamilton, a digital video ``Odile and Odette" by Yinka Shonibare MBE and a series of ink drawings on paper ``Untitled" by David Shrigley.
Visit www.kukjegallery.com or call (02) 735-8449.
Marc Quinn
Quinn is known as being part of the group of conceptual artists dubbed 'Young British Artists', along with Damien Hirst. He emerged as a leading figure in the British art scene in the early 1990s, with memorable works such as ``Self," a frozen sculpture of his head made from four and a half liters of his own blood.
At the Gana Art Center, viewers can find paintings of vibrantly colored blooms, sculptures of supermodel Kate Moss and a bust of Marie Antoinette made in bread and cast in bronze.
In ``Solar Activity Monitor" and ``Nile Flood, the colors of exotic orchids, cherry tomatoes and strawberries seem to burst from the canvas. Upon closer scrutiny, the blossoming flowers seem to have sexual undertones.
``Maquette of Sphinx," is a gold-plated sculpture of Moss shown in a twisted yoga position, while ``Endless Column," features two identical Moss sculptures placed on top of each other.
``What was interesting to me doing the Kate Moss sculptures was that she seemed to me to be a contemporary deity and that one of the problems we have is that our deities are only inhabited by our desires rather than anything the deity itself represents, which has some kind of moral, spiritual and metaphysical structure," Quinn said, in the exhibition catalogue.
The exhibition runs through Aug. 3. Gana Art Center, Pyeongchang-dong, northern Seoul. Tickets are 3,000 won for adults and 2,000 won for students. Visit www.ganaart.com.
cathy@koreatimes.co.kr
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