SEMA Selected emerging artists 2008

Located right outside the walls of a wonderful little palace is Seoul Museum of Art. Pardon the lack of names - On the museum website, in both korean and english, there is no list of the participants! I have a brocure kicking around somewhere, and if i can find it, i will update accordingly.


Our first no-name artist does these wonderful paintings. built of layers of movement, the depth surges forward and receedes, especially in this specific one, which appreas abstract. Others were much more obviously "something", like layers of outlines of a horse, for example, and the easily-recognizable subject sorta ruined it for me.




Emerging artists possess that quirky ability to surprices sometimes, and finding an interesting and fresh way to show basic geometric shapes after the 20th century is quite the trick.


Projected into the corner of the gallery space, and with the corner rebuilt so it juts back out into the viewers' space, is a slowly-progressing video. Every few seconds a small change or two can be detected - something will be added or taken away. I wonder if the changes are pre-programmed, or if maybe they are random, or better yet, somehow an external force is making the changes?

The Good Stuff
Somewhere in the middle of the exhibition was all the best stuff. This body of work was a series of crazy-thin lightboxes. the images, about six feet across, were made of tiny photographs of urban settings that shared a specific colour. In this case, the subject was powder-puff blue garage doors and storefront protectors, the kind that typically roll up or swing open.



While some rock n' roll song that sounded similar to a rough old rolling stones song played in the background, three videos on high speed and in reverse showed a handphone, and ipod, and a hand-held videogame starting as dust and getting a reverse-grinding to emerge whole and functional again.



The crappiest of protests, this artist displayed a collection of videos of short-lived, ineffective protest. repeatedly dragging a mop over his words to keep them from evaporating, the artist silently goes about protesting high tuition, American soldiers, and the Free Trade Agreement that has been coming into effect in South Korea (causing drastic changes) as people continue with their lives, oblivious to the words on which they tread.



A satirical ten-minute video looking at the us of the word "White House" in South Korea. A symbol of power, the name has been confiscated by those with wedding halls, restaurants, and karioke businesses. Some know that there is a White House in the US, in which the president lives and works, and some do not. (The consensus reached in the video is that, associating a business with the White House does not seem to affect patronage one way or the other)