Aernout Mik: Parallelities
REAL DMZ PROJECT 2015
August 29–November 29, 2015
Art Sonje Center
87 Yulgok-ro 3-gil
Jongno-gu Seoul
110-200 Korea
T +82 2 733 8945
F +82 2 733 8377
Art Sonje Center presents two concurrent exhibitions, running from August 29 to November 29, 2015. Aernout Mik: Parallelities is the Dutch artist’s first solo exhibition to be held in South Korea, and the REAL DMZ PROJECT announces its fourth edition.
Aernout Mik: Parallelities displays four separate video installations that focus on boundaries created from the differences between nations, people and ideologies, as well as the socio-psychological phenomena occurring around them. The exhibition title reflects the artist’s practice, which explores differentiated yet connected parallel situations such as the real and the unreal, the past and the present, and borderlines between countries. The exhibition also includes Mik’s new production, Ice Cream Hill (2014–15), which was commissioned by the REAL DMZ PROJECT. The film centers on Sabseulbong Peak, located near the DMZ in Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do in South Korea. This deeply symbolic place, which the public is not allowed to visit even to this day, clearly represents the North-South divide. Mik’s films create illogical and unrealistic scenes by alternately showing conflicting situations, through which he makes the viewer consider whether it is possible to clearly understand and define the incidents or phenomena we encounter in our lives.
The REAL DMZ PROJECT 2015 invites Magnus Bärtås, Minouk Lim, Tatsuo Miyajima and Ingo Niermann, whose works have long concentrated on the DMZ, to join the 49 artists/teams who exhibited in the downtown of Dongsong in Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do for ten days prior to the current exhibition. Unlike previous projects, which centered on hard-to-access sites near the Civilian Control Line, this year’s exhibition in Dongsong extended its geographical parameter to the downtown area where commercial and cultural facilities are concentrated, and strove to engage with the local community at a more intimate level. The exhibition at Art Sonje Center is an expansion of the exhibition in Dongsong, and attempts to raise questions on the DMZ area, where the history of the past and the life of the present, political tension and daily life all coexist. For the current exhibition, participants reflected upon the different site-specificities of the DMZ border area and the art museum in Seoul, and conceptualized the exhibition according to various contextual components, such as the types of audiences and the public elements of the space.
Curated by Keum Hyun Han, Nam-See Kim, Sunjung Kim, Hyejin Lim
Artists:
Aernout Mik// Bae Byoung Kyu, Bae Minkyung, Magnus Bärtås, Youngjoo Cho, Dae Jin Choi, Choi Gene-uk, Soyoung Chung + Dongsei Kim, Chung Wonyeon, Alain Declercq, HyeKyung Ham, Heo Su Bin, Hong Yoo-Kyung, HongLee Hyun-sook, Jeong Ki Hoon, Jin Chul kyu, Jin Heewoong, Hyejin Jo, Kang Hee Jung, Kang Hyunah, Kang Seoug Gyu + Jeong Seung Ik, Kang Sindae, Kim Dohee, Dongsei Kim, Kim Hyunjoo, ps jinjoo kim, Kim Jipyeong, Kim Joon, Kim Jun-Ah, Kim Junyoung, Kim Kyoung-Ho, Lee-park Kim, Rayeon Kim, Kim So Young + Shim Bo Seon, Sunkyong Kim, Kim Taedong, Rémi Klemensiewicz, Ko Young-Taeg, Hayoun Kwon, Kwon Yongju, LeeHaiMinSun, Lee Jae Ho, Minouk Lim, Tatsuo Miyajima, Ingo Niermann, Jaewoo Oh, Park Kyung Jin, Yumi Park, Seoul National University Graduate School of Environmental Studies DMZ Studio, Shin je hyun, Ji-sun Shin, Yang Youn-Hwa, Yang yun im, Yoo Mokyon, Joongho Yum
Art Sonje Center was founded in 1998 and plays a crucial role in exhibiting and fostering contemporary art in Seoul. Aimed at nurturing familiarity with contemporary artistic practice, Art Sonje Center is dedicated to the development of a program consisting of exhibitions, projects, performances, screenings, lectures, workshops, publications and education programs.
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