Busan MoMA

One of the biggest gripes I have with Ulsan is the lack of "cultural" outings available in the city, especially the lack of an art museum. When I lived in Prague, I used to love wandering around museums with my friends on the weekends. We got as excited about new exhibits as we did about the latest concert at the Roxy. Before I left the States, one of the customers at my old job told me that I should be sure to check out some of the modern art in Korea, as she had been wowed by what she saw on a trip to Seoul a few years ago. With this in mind, I made my way to "Dynamic Busan," Korea's second largest city, about an hour south of Ulsan, to visit the Busan MoMA (Museum of Modern Art).

The MoMA is currently hosting two exhibitions: "Vision & Perspective" and "at the Groove of Time." The former is a showcase of four young, up-and-coming Korean artists, Lim Jong-kwang, Son Hyun-tae, Kang Tae-hun, and Park Young-sun. Each artist had a room to themselves where they had constructed their installations. To be honest, I was underwhelmed by them. I've seen better art at university student open houses. One was far too cluttered and trying too hard to be symbolic, another was boring and overly self-indulgent, and the third was a time lapse video installation of an apartment complex, which was mildly interesting. The fourth, Son Hyun-tae's, was the best of the group, two incomplete casts of humans constructed out of aluminum wire with a woven vinyl and cloth overlay. The wire frame bursts away from the figures in waves and literally spills out of the room, giving sense of fluidity of form.

"at the Groove of Time," on the other hand, was everything I had hoped for. The stated purpose of the exhibit is to explore the relationship between time, space, and human experience, especially memory. In particular, the work of the featured artists focuses on how one experiences time in a foreign space, the often painful adjustment one must make to the new space, the immediacy of experience during that adjustment and the insights that one gains about the passage of time. I couldn't have been in a better state of mind to deal with these objectives. The works of five Korean artists were featured: Han Soon-ja, An Zong-de, Kim Sung-soo, Jeon Kang-ok, and Han Myeong-ok. Han Soon-ja's work explores the distinction and interchangeablity of objects in different places, thus bringing attention to the distinctiveness and continuity of space. The piece I liked best was "Rounds Moving," a painting of a large, bright orange circle on a square, blue canvas with several smaller orange circles or differing sizes and shades arranged inside the circle. The color contrasts create the illusion that the small circles are moving, even though they are stationary. An Zong-de's medium is time itself. He takes objects that change noticably when exposed to the elements, arranges them a certain way, and leaves them be until time has transformed their colors/shapes/physical make-ups. For example, several of his pieces were large pieces of cloth on which he had placed small nails and aluminum hairpins. As the metal objects rusted, they stained the cloth, thereby creating a pattern on the makeshift canvas. Kim Sung-soo's paintings are meant to make the viewer question his or her own memory. Each painting is of the same face with the same melancholic expression, but none of the features of the faces indicate qualities like age or gender that would allow the viewer to "know" the subject. Yet, his intention is that the face be recognizable enough that the viewer is sure that he or she has seen it before somewhere, but that their memories are failing them. Jeon Kang-ok's works deal with gravity. He uses his understanding of how gravity works to hold objects in seemingly impossible positions. His intention is to make the viewer aware of how accustomed we are to gravity's pull and to question our viewpoints of the world from the standpoint of how we experience gravity. Several pieces were open, wooden cubes with transparent fishing line strung between the edges and rocks suspended on the webs of line. From afar, it looks as if the rocks are floating in space. My favorite piece was "Suspended Cubes, Suspended Time II," three stacks of wooden cubes jutting out perpendicular to the wall, held in place by heavy iron weights suspended by wires above the stacks. Finally, Han Myeong-ok's work comments on everyday objects and the transference of space to time. I enjoyed her exhibit the least, mostly because I couldn't understand how her pieces were supposed to accomplish her stated objectives. However, she did have my favorite piece in the whole exhibit, entitled "Sound": two parallel lines of rocks of differing sizes and shapes linked together by unwound casette tapes.

A pleasant surprise was that the entrance fee had been waived, so my visit was free. I definetely plan on going back in January when two new exhibits open, and for any art-lovers who live in or around Busan, I recommend checking it out if you haven't already. There wasn't any photography allowed in the exhibit spaces, so here are some pictures of a few of the sculptures outside the entrance to the museum: