Dae-Bak Super COol

September 22 — November 10, 2018

Curated by Heeseon Choi and Max Presneill
Presented by: Torrance Art Museum & Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles

Osang Gwon - Junghwa Hong - David Jang - Young Joon Kwak - Kang Seung Lee
Nam June Paik - Kyungryul Park - Soung W. Park - Hwan Kwon Yi - Haena Yoo

Korean and Korean American artists have exploded onto the international art scene in recent years with a voice that resonates across both East and West. The South Korean art scene has emerged from the traditions of its history to now reflect a world of connectedness and technology, ambitious new architecture, K-Pop, strange fashionistas and contemporary design. It is a country breaking out of an agrarian-Confucian history, recontextualizing its attitude in the 21st century, and these developments reflect the way South Korea wants to project its image onto the world.

The art works included in this exhibition explore this new national psyche, its relationship to a more internationally orientated outlook and new dialogues of the present. Political difficulties, both in Korea and the US, currently mirror the disruptions of this new, educated and financially solvent culture, of the democratic will of a Facebook generation in the face of a patriarchal structure and a traditional society. Aspects of this can be seen reflected, albeit at times obliquely, in the art being produced by these pioneers of Korean contemporary art.

The Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles and TAM have collaborated for this exhibition that brings together a small group of Korean American and Korean artists (based in Los Angeles and in South Korea) to highlight the technical mastery and conceptual finesse of artists from this culture and highlight a varied group who address aspects of contemporary practice from painting to sculpture, to installation, as viewed through a Korean lens.