Artists and exhibits announced
10,000 Lives
3 September – 7 November 2010
Press preview: 2 September 2010
Gwangju, South Korea
With works by more than 100 artists, realized between 1901 and 2010, as well as several new commissions, the exhibition will be configured as a temporary museum in which both artworks and cultural artifacts from more than 25 countries are brought together to examine our obsession with images.
“Each day billions of images are produced and consumed,” explains Director Massimiliano Gioni. “More than 500,000 images per second are uploaded to a single website. Americans alone take an average of 550 snap shots per second. A record 14 million dollars has been paid for the right to reproduce one single image. We seek comfort in images and carry out wars in their name; we congregate around images, we adore them, crave them, we consume them and destroy them.”
The exhibition title is borrowed from Maninbo (10,000 Lives), the 30 volume epic poem by Korean author Ko Un. Conceived while Ko was in prison for his participation in the 1980 South Korean democratic movement, Maninbo comprises over 3,800 portraits in words, describing every person Ko Un has ever met, including figures from history and literature.
“From ancient mythology we learn that images were created to capture the shadow of lovers and to commemorate the lives of the ones we have lost,” continues Gioni. “The exhibition 10,000 Lives attempts to present a series of case studies that explore our love for images and our need to create substitutes, effigies, and stands-in for ourselves and our loved ones. The exhibition unravels as a gallery of portraits or as a dysfunctional family album. It tells the story of people through the images they create and the images they leave behind, but it also follows the lives of images themselves, tracing their endless metamorphoses, from funerary statue to commercial propaganda, from religious icon to scientific tool, from a mirror of ourselves to a projection of our desires.”
Along with the work of contemporary artists, the exhibition includes found photographs and cultural artifacts that exemplify the multifaceted existence of images, placing them within a wider cultural context and, at times, blurring the line between documents, relics, and art works.
Participating Artists (Please note: this list is not final. Current as of April 20, 2010):
Pawel Althamer; Carl Andre; Art Orienté objet (Laval-Jeantet & Mangin); Anna Artaker; Tauba Auerbach; Morton Bartlett; Thomas Bayrle; E.J. Bellocq; Hans Bellmer; Nayland Blake; Jonathan Borofsky; Irina Botea; Kerstin Brätsch; Glenn Brown; James Lee Byars; Duncan Campbell; James Castle; Maurizio Cattelan; Jacques Charlier; Hyejeong Cho; Kwang-Ho Choi; Anne Collier; Roberto Cuoghi; Keren Cytter; John De Andrea; André de Dienes; Philip-Lorca diCorcia; Mike Disfarmer; Walker Evans; Eye Glass Shop; Harun Farocki; Jean Fautrier; Hans-Peter Feldmann; Fischli and Weiss; Lee Friedlander; Katharina Fritsch; Aurélien Froment; Paul Fusco; Cyprien Gaillard; Rupprecht Geiger; Franz Gertsch; Hermann Glöckner; Gu Dexin; João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva; Guo Fengyi; Yang-ah Ham; Duane Hanson; Ydessa Hendeles/Teddy Bear Project; Thomas Hirschhorn; Tom Holert; Arnoud Holleman; Carsten Höller; Roni Horn; Tehching Hsieh; Huang Yong Ping; Heungsoon Im; Sanja Iveković; Jikken Kobo / Experimental Workshop (Shozo Kitadai, Kiyoji Otsuji, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi); Yasmine Kabir; Kan Xuan; Jacob Kassay; Leandro Katz; Mike Kelley; Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz; Hanyong Kim; Konrad Klapheck; Alice Kok; Kokdu Dolls from the collection of Ock Rang Kim; Jeff Koons; Tetsumi Kudo; Emma Kunz; Maria Lassnig; Mark Leckey; Jung Lee; Seung-taek Lee; Sherrie Levine; Herbert List; Liu Wei; Liu Zheng; Paul McCarthy; Gustav Metzger; John Miller; Rabih Mroué; Matt Mullican; Namhan Photo Studio; Bruce Nauman; Shinro Ohtake; Henrik Olesen; Eliot Porter; Seth Price; Thom Puckey; Bridget Riley; Peter Roehr; Dieter Roth; Ataru Sato; Karl Schenker; Jean-Frédéric Schnyder; Tino Sehgal; Paul Sharits; Cindy Sherman; Laurie Simmons; Hito Steyerl; Sturtevant; Paul Thek; Ryan Trecartin; Tuol Sleng Prison Photographs; Useful Photography; Franco Vaccari; Stan VanDerBeek; Danh Vo; Andy Warhol; Andro Wekua; Christopher Williams; Ming Wong; Wu Wenguang; Katsuhiro Yamaguchi; Haegue Yang; Ye Jinglu (photo album discovered by Tong Bingxue); Sergey Zarva; Zhang Enli; Zhao Shutong; Wang Guanyi and the Rent Collection Courtyard collective; Zhou Xiahou; Jakub Ziolkowski; Artur Zmijewski
A final list of artists and projects will be announced in August 2010.
About the Gwangju Biennale
Founded in 1995 in memory of the spirit of civil uprising resulting from the 1980 repression of the Gwangju Democratization Movement, the Gwangju Biennale is Asia’s oldest and most prestigious biennial of contemporary art. Under the helm of previous curators that include Kerry Brougher, Sukwon Chang, Okwui Enwezor, Charles Esche, Hou Hanru, Honghee Kim, Yongwoo Lee, Youngchul Lee, Kwangsoo Oh, Wankyoung Sung and Harald Szeemann, the Gwangju Biennale has established itself as a highlight of the international contemporary art biennale circuit.
Media Contact
For additional information, images, or to request an interview, please contact:
US & International
Andy Cushman
Rumors Communication
Gwangju Biennale Foundation
T: +1 (347) 627-0050
M: +1 (917) 744-4042
andy@rumorscommunication.com
andy@gb.or.kr
Korea
Jin Kyong Jeong
Public Relations Department
Gwangju Biennale Foundation
T: +82 62 608 4222
F: +82 62 608 4229
1212jjk@gb.or.kr
For general (non-media) inquiries on Gwangju and the Biennale, please contact: biennale@gb.or.kr
