Upcoming and Current Art Exhibitions in Seoul this Fall/Winter 2021

Over 200 original works including drawings, prints and art books will be shown as part of this exhibition, which is eager to illuminate the life and artistic world of Henri Matisse.

– Seoul Arts Center

Mary Koss is an artist from California, USA, and will be introduced for the first time in Korea through this exhibition. The artist has been passionately exploring light as a subject and material for the past 60 years, and has experimented with various materials and techniques to incorporate light into his paintings. In particular, focusing on individual differences in subjectivity, we created a screen that constantly changes according to the viewer’s perception and location.

– APMA

《Ai Weiwei》is a retrospective of Ai Weiwei (b. 1957), a global installation artist, film director and an activist. It will introduce the artist’s representative works that embody his ways of thought. 〈Coronation〉(2020), a film that depicts the situation of Wuhan City following its shutdown in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as 〈Omni〉(2019), a film made with VR technology will also be screened. Moreover, a site-specific project that deals with the current issues of 2021 will also be unfolded, which will be a new large-scale work that will be developed by taking into consideration the features of Museum Madang. The exhibition aims to look back on the role and impact of art within the society through the artist who has been dealing with major issues of the contemporary society (i.e. issue of democracy including surveillance and censorship in the modern society, human rights and solidarity of refugees).

– MMCA

In November 2021, My Art Museum held a retrospective exhibition of the painter Chagall who left a mark in art history with his original materials and style, and the most important source of art creation for Chagall, the Bible. It will be held from the 25th to the 10th of April 22nd. Marc Chagall, a Russian-born painter who settled in France, spreads the message of life and love based on colorful colors and dreamy style, and is loved as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century along with Picasso and Matisse. . Unlike the previous Chagall exhibitions held several times in Korea, this exhibition includes 19 oil paintings and gouache, including and , which are in the possession of Chagall’s bereaved family with the theme of ‘the Bible’, which has not been dealt with alone. A total of 220 original works will be displayed, including masterpieces from the store, two large tapestries that are close to 4 meters tall, and the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster collection in Germany. During the time he was drawing Bible-themed works, he developed his art world based on his love for mankind suffering from war and slaughter. This will be a time to fully appreciate the message of love for mankind that he delivers through the Bible.

– My Art Museum

“Most of the 75 pieces to be showcased have never been seen by viewers in Korea before, except for two ― Kandinsky’s ‘Improvisation No. 217, Gray Oval’ and Malevich’s ‘Suprematism’,” Lee Hoon-suk, the show’s curator and an art historian, told The Korea Times.

– The Korea Times

Espace Louis Vuitton Seoul in Cheongdam, southern Seoul, is exhibiting selected works of the Andy Warhol collection from Oct. 1 to Feb. 6 next year. Titled “Andy Warhol: Looking for Andy,” the exhibition displays pieces from the high-end brand’s art museum Fondation Louis Vuitton’s collection in Paris.

– Korea Joonang Daily

Humans have perpetually endeavored to define who they are. This is evidenced by the numerous modifiers that exist for the word “homo,” which has the meaning of “human.” Humans, who have been regarded as wise and rational beings for centuries, have long believed that they are able to alter the course of the world independently from God. Meanwhile, the astonishing development of science and technology has indeed brought incredible changes to human civilization. While humans continue to challenge themselves to transcend their limits, on the other hand, they are also facing uncontrollable disasters that shake the very core of their daily lives. Amid these new and unfamiliar circumstances and a rapidly changing environment, we again find ourselves posing questions about humans. With this awareness, Leeum endeavors to examine the meaning of being human and to assess the future through the exhibition Human, 7 questions. The exhibition is organized in the form of posing seven questions about humans through approximately 50 artists and 130 artworks, both domestic and international. Beginning with the postwar art of the mid-twentieth century, when introspection on human existence became widespread, the exhibition proceeds to examine more recent artworks that have emerged together with discussions on the crisis of humanism and the posthuman. Through these works, the exhibition seeks to examine various images of humans that traverse the boundaries between the mind and body, rational and irrational, “me” and the community, real and virtual, and humans and nonhumans. Further, the exhibition seeks to reconsider human values that have been taken for granted thus far. What is human? What are the conditions that define humanity? How are the boundaries between me, the Other, and the world changing? And, are we ready to coexist with unfamiliar beings beyond humans?

– Leeum Art Museum

Anne Collier has been recognized internationally for her complex body of work that considers our social and cultural relationships with images and with the medium of photography itself. Central to this project is Collier’s ongoing consideration of the emotional and psychological attachments we develop with images, and how these (auto)biographical narratives relate to photography’s inherent relationship with memory, melancholia and loss. Throughout her work Collier seeks to privilege the relationship between gender and image-making, whilst simultaneously maintaining a tension between the ’objective’, almost forensic-like depiction of her subjects and the often fraught and highly emotive nature of the images and objects that she re-presents.

– Gallery Baton

Toiletpaper (stylized as “TOILETPAPER”) is a biannual magazine co-created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. Founded in 2010, the magazine is presented as a limited edition book and its website offers a post-internet collaged exhibition of animated and video content.

The photography-based publication contains no articles or advertisements, and each issue revolves around a basic theme, such as love or greed. The brightly-coloured, surreal images vary in style and reference, and include word play and optical illusions.Hailed as “a new frontier of media and creative eco-sustainability,” Toiletpaper is interpreted as a democratized art platform whose accessible images circulate in books and throughout social media, while also being applied to design and home decor products. To celebrate their purported “one-millionth” magazine sale, Cattelan and Ferrari opened their first Toiletpaper pop-up shop in Milan.

– Wikipedia

My Art Museum will hold the exhibition ‘Alice Dalton Brown, A Place of Light’ from July 24 to October 24, 2021. 

Alice Dalton Brown is a New York-based painter who paints with realism techniques. Her works are in the possession of leading institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the New York Public Library, and are loved by many domestic galleries and collectors. 

This exhibition is her first and largest retrospective exhibition abroad. It was produced as an original oil painting of 〈Long golden day〉, which was popular because art prints were introduced in dramas ‘The World of the Married’ and ‘Secret Forest’, and commissioned by My Art Museum. About 80 works including large-scale oil paintings and pastels of 2-3 meters in size, including three new works, will be introduced. 

Alice Dalton Brown’s work, which delicately depicts the contrast between natural and artificial materials, provides a visual beauty of light, water and wind, and a refreshing and peaceful rest. 

Through the blue landscape that seems to extend beyond the canvas, it will provide the audience with a time of quiet meditation.

– My Art MuseUM

The first retrospective in Korea on the master of surrealism, Salvador Dalí is opening at DDP, presenting the Spanish artist’s oeuvre based on the collections from the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres in Spain, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and the Dalí (Salvador Dalí Museum) in Florida, United States.

After a long course of collaboration with the Salvador Dali Foundation, Salvador Dalí’s retrospective surveys the artist’s career and his genius talents by exploring the paintings chronologically from the artist’s early period to the last along with many interviews he conducted, film works, advertisements, fashion, and design, etc.

– GNC Media

“Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures” is an exhibition at the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul’s Yongsan-gu District that displays replicas of the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun and 1,300 relics. Prominent experts took part in the event with the Egyptian government’s support. Marking the centennial anniversary of the tomb’s discovery, which is considered the greatest of its kind in archaeological history, the exhibition features real-size reproductions of items found in the tomb, from the murals of tombs to golden masks. Visitors can experience the process of excavating the tomb and learn about ancient Egyptian history and culture.

– Korea.net

This immersive sensory experience is part of the exhibition “Beyond the Road,” where the mix of sounds and visual effects highlights the displayed paintings, sculptures, videos and installations. Since its debut in London’s Saatchi Gallery in 2019, Seoul has stepped up as its first host in Asia.

The exhibition is presented in an interactive format, where the visitors get to be the ones choosing their own route and interpretation of the nameless visual arts and media pieces. The only guiding element is the music of British electronic musician James Lavelle and his band UNKLE.

For the last two decades, the show’s creatives ― producer Colin Nightingale and director Stephen Dobbie ― have been a part of Punchdrunk, the British theater company that ushered in the genre of “immersive theater.” One of their most popular works is “Sleep No More,” a reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy “Macbeth,” where spectators are given free rein to choose where to go and what scene to watch.

– Korea TImes