Yangpyeong Art Museum’s Summer Project

2018 WOMEN’S ART NOW

July 13th ~ September 2nd, 2018

Yangpyeong Art Museum

Yangpyeong Art Museum has taken on a role as a leading metropolitan cultural landmark in which it provides local cultural experience with contemporary art. Among them are eight exquisite selected exhibitions and education programs throughout the year which shows the special quality of the museum as well as local culture and historical heritage. Although it has a short history, Yangpyeong Art Museum has been recognized with organizing exhibitions abundant with diversity expanding the local art culture to the national art scene.

Yangpyeong Art Museum’s Summer Project 2018 Women’s Art Now will exhibit female artists’ artworks centered on the art during the development of Korean contemporary art. The full-scale women’s art scene in Korea began with Na Hyesok (1896-December 1948, born in Suwon) who left Korea in 1913 to study in Tokyo Women’s Art College. Several female artists after her such as Paek Nam-soon, Rhee Seund -ja, Park Eul-bok, Chun Kyung-ja have studied art in Japan.

Some of the artists who have left for Europe in the 1950s, after the tumultuous societal change with independence and the Korean War, returned to Korea with figurative art. It blossomed into modernism art trend until the 80s. Meanwhile, there were artists who pursued realism that reveals form through naturalistic tendency expressing emotions coming from our roots, and the ones who pursued non-figurative art through the deconstruction of the form.
<2018 Women’s Art Now> Exhibition has its basis on the artists who have contributed to the beginning and development of women’s art scene in Korea. They are the ones who were active in the 70s art scene which resulted in the qualitative growth in painting. Whereas the figurative expressionism with emotional and expressive artworks have emerged in the 60s, there were concepts and minimalism with more philosophical and sophisticated artworks in the 70s’
art scene. White monochrome, which is a uniquely Korean form, made its first appearance.

This exhibition seeks an opportunity to compare the development of women’s contemporary art form, then and now, with a focus on female artists who have experienced a historic change in their younger years and the postmodernism era in their later years. There are artists who have to persist on their own consistent art form and there are others who have explored new subjects and expressions with a societal change to capture the history in their work. Women’s art today is more focused on simultaneity between the local and global artists and few of them has been the leaders with their futuristic artworks. The elders themselves, who have inquired the fundamentals of the art instead of chasing the trend and phenomenon, could be a moral lesson for the younger artists.

Consequently, <2018 Women’s Art Now (Journey through Art-2, Summer Project)> will overview all of their art in one place ranging from local artists to world-renowned artists. The only regret is that we could not invite more artists due to spatial limitation but this could be an opportunity to examine the richness of women’s world of artwork and to foresee the prospect of future generation’s art. In this sense, we hope this exhibition could contribute to the expansion
of newer aesthetics with examining women’s art then and now.

Curatorial Affairs, Yangpyeong Art Museum