| I curated Korean Eye: Moon Generation in 2009. The exhibition attracted over 250,000 visitors during its four months at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The driving force behind this initiative was Korean Eye co-founders, collectors David and Serenella Ciclitira, who wanted to create a platform on which contemporary artists from Korea could show their work internationally. Their efforts received huge national interest in Korea. Learning from the first exhibition, a decision was made to organize an international curatorial board in order to enhance and strengthen the artist selection. This year’s curatorial board includes Jiyoon Lee, Amelie von Wedel, Serenella Ciclitira, Tsong-Zung (Johnson) Chang, Rodman Primack, and myself. Five countries and six curators, over 20 presentations about 200 artists, and more than 1500 e-mails over the span of 182 days are the numbers behind Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary. |  |
Daehyung Lee
I curated Korean Eye: Moon Generation in 2009. The exhibition attracted over 250,000 visitors during its four months at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The driving force behind this initiative was Korean Eye co-founders, collectors David and Serenella Ciclitira, who wanted to create a platform on which contemporary artists from Korea could show their work internationally. Their efforts received huge national interest in Korea. Learning from the first exhibition, a decision was made to organize an international curatorial board in order to enhance and strengthen the artist selection. This year’s curatorial board includes Jiyoon Lee, Amelie von Wedel, Serenella Ciclitira, Tsong-Zung (Johnson) Chang, Rodman Primack, and myself.
Five countries and six curators, over 20 presentations about 200 artists, and more than 1500 e-mails over the span of 182 days are the numbers behind Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary. Undoubtedly, the most difficult part of this process was excluding artists due to space limits in the catalogue and the exhibition space. The title “Fantastic Ordinary” was born after a three-month-long debate to choose ten artists out of 75 from the book Korean Eye: Contemporary Korean Art by SKIRA. Those ten artists are especially good at transforming ordinary subjects and objects into something fantastic with their witty, critical, unique methods. For example, a banknote becomes a place to satirize the political power game (Jeon Joon Ho); an assortment of assembled tires gives life to a mutant shark (Ji Yong Ho); cosmetic soap becomes a classic vase (Shin Meekyung); a hog and a rabbit gives birth to a hybrid surreal creature (Park Eun Young); and a Korean man in classic female dress tries to become the heroine of a British fairy tale. All of these artists and subjects easily cross genres to speak issues about absurdity, environment, gender, dislocation, and identity.
Curating an exhibition is not that difficult, but developing a working system that helps to promote talented local artists is a totally different story. In a sense it is like a game that takes a team working toward one goal to win. This year’s Korean Eye exhibition has a group of talented team players that gives the artists a multinational network for enhancing their international exposure to curators, art historians, collectors, and market experts in London, Singapore, and Seoul.
