Richard Hamilton: Serial Obsessions

Richard Hamilton: Serial Obsessions is the first show dedicated to Hamilton in Korea to celebrate UK/Korea 2017-18, a year-long project. Born in London in 1922, Hamilton is one of the UK’s most influential artists who observed modern society from a unique perspective and visually reinterpreted it in the mid to late 20th century.

Serial Obsessions is a survey of a particular kind. Organised around specific groups or series of works drawn from the broad narrative of Richard Hamilton’s career, the exhibition unfolds as a series of close-ups from six successive decades, from the 1950s all the way through to the 2000s. The subjects of these groups and series could hardly be more different, ranging as they do from toasters and flowers to pop stars and political prisoners, but the cumulative effect of the exhibition is to show a recurring pattern to the “complex contrivance” of Hamilton’s art-making.

Each of these groups of work began with Hamilton sourcing an image or images from what he called the “great visual matrix that surrounds us” in the modern world. Hamilton was acutely conscious as to how rapidly this matrix was changing through new communications technologies and responded accordingly.  From the panorama of possibilities offered up by the increasingly wide-screen environment in which he lived, he honed in on particular images which spoke precisely of this modern mediatized environment which he would then work on in a succession of drawings, collages, prints and paintings—though not always in that order.

Even though there have been multiple large retrospective shows after his death in 2011, there were few occasions for Korean audiences to see his works. The exhibition provides an opportunity to have a closer look at the multi-layered artworks of a founding figure of pop art who began working in the 1950s and who continuously expanded his world as a critical inhabitant and observer of the modern society.