Drawings from MMCA Collection

Recognized for its values only since the 20th century, drawing as an artistic medium is acknowledged for its possibilities and potential within the realm of modern and contemporary art even to this day. Now, drawing is granted autonomy as opposed to being presupposed as a rough sketch for the finished work. In communicating with a variety of realms, it is expanding its reach beyond the physical conditions to embody new aesthetic values.

Special storage is an open storage of 800 or more drawings from MMCA’s collection. Participating works include Lee Jungsup’s A Boy (1943–45), Yoo Youngkuk’s Mountain (mid-1970s), Won Sukyun’s Ants (1976) as well as Chung Takyoung’s Drawing 2002-3 (2002), Suh Yongsun’s Pine Tree (1983), Paik Namjune’s Highland I (1988). They represent MMCA’s collection, demonstrating a sense of form and artistic experiments at work. Special storage’s Drawings from the MMCA’s Collection provides the opportunity to explore the shifts in the concept of drawings from various perspectives through an extensive collection of drawings. The drawings also offer infinite diversity and generative movements, and new narratives in the face of order and chaos.

Documentation and representation
Artists have documented and represented in drawings what they have encountered and how they have responded against the backdrop of the given conditions and situations. In the traditional sense, drawings’ significance as artistic achievement as they attempt to grasp the essence of the object and cultivate one’s power of observation and imagination.

Redefinition of drawing
Drawing had been considered secondary to painting until the mid-20th century when research on the artistic medium finally began. Despite its belated recognition, drawing is recognized as an alternative approach in contemporary art based on its creativity and potential. A drawing is, at times, fragmented and discontinuous while at others private and individual. Drawing as a starting point rather than a destination communicates the aesthetic value of what is naked.

Extending lines
Now, the scope of drawing goes beyond lining above a surface; it embraces the act of erasing, cutting, and pasting. From paper and pencil to a person and one’s environment, process and development to physical movement, its implication has broadened accordingly. In modern and contemporary art, drawing incorporates medium-hybridity, expanding the concept of drawing to infinity and expanding the potential of expression.