2015 Site-specific Art Project Interplay
avaf, Ross Manning, Jinnie Seo, Shinji Ohmaki
April 14–August 23, 2015
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
30, Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu
Seoul
South Korea
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm,
Wednesday and Saturday 10am–9pm (6–9pm free of charge)
T +82 2 3701 9500
The 2015 Site-Specific Art Project Interplay features the work of four artists whose individual and cooperative creative endeavors are grounded in traditional art areas like painting and sculpture and gradually expand to unlikely fields like architecture and design. Their reactions to their location and circumstances are the compelling drives that inform the artists as they transform the physical space of the exhibition hall into an organic work of art. Visitors, as they move between four rooms, which in themselves represent different works of art that vary widely in terms of character and theme, will encounter new definitions of art and space. It is such cross-interaction that can lead to a significant change in perspective regarding the dynamics of art and location.
Because of a viewer’s range of awareness and process of experiencing an object, installation art has been able to expand the realm of creative expression by rising above the boundaries of traditional art genres. Thus, an artist can blur the lines of application and expectation, react to a wider variety of cultural practices and artistic approaches, and, in so doing, reach a larger audience. The artist often takes their audience on a journey of discovery, simultaneously challenging and defying their attempts to define/classify a work. Homi Bhabha, an early advocate of multiculturalism, long argued for the concept of “hybrid vigor.” It was his assertion that a “state of in-between” would give rise to the most creative forms of cultural identity. It is thus through the concept of cultural hybridity that Interplay examines how the revolutionary practices of artists, in an ever diversifying world, have been expanding the boundaries of art as we know it.
After the death of art, and the liberation of artists from the puritanism that dominated the 20th century are deeply interested in space as something that is shared by many rather than as individual property. Thus, the four participating artists allow the realm of their activities to penetrate the walls of their studio so as to respond to the world beyond in the form uniquely individual reinterpretations of objects, sculptures, immateriality, technology and environment. Though such an attitude has always been at the core installation art, private cultural sub-element motifs (scribbles/graffiti, advertisements, comedy, etc.) become expressions of public feeling, thus turning the question about the fundamental meaning of art on its head, without sarcasm or malice.
Indeed, Interplay is a presentation of a new lexicon for artistic creation of new word, new tools, new concepts and how these reflect the attitudes of the artists themselves as they seek to reestablish different art forms amidst a changing society.
Press contact: Ki-seok Lee, Public Relations team T +82 2 2188 6232 / jamush5 [at] korea.kr
