Contemporary Art of Korea

Despite the title, this book does not claim to be comprehensive in its description of contemporary Korean art and does not even attempt to mention all the notable artists in the country. On the contrary, it demonstrates a highly personal selection of themes and subjects, for example, it tells how artists view the rapidly growing and changing Korean cities and realize that those old grandmother's houses where they grew up are no longer there. And it is precisely to those places that they wish to return. It discusses how in the eighties, artists ate crackers with their hands tied, and the very first Korean performance, involving full audience participation, consisted of drinking rice wine makgeolli together with the viewers and eating panchan snacks; even now we see how in the famous director Hong Sang-soo's films his actors simply eat, drink, and talk about nothing on screen. Additionally, Korean artists and writers talk about the rapidly growing beauty industry and the struggle against aging, about how, looking around, they suddenly find themselves surrounded by unreal people, perhaps cyborgs, or maybe our entire reality is just some strange, virtual game. The heroes of their works feel the desire to turn into trees—because only trees are alive and real. It seems that this narrative is not even about contemporary art, but about Korea itself. As one of the characters in this book, Ahn Kyung-Soo, noted: ordinary people simply do not have time to think about what is happening to them; they need to run very quickly, which is why it is the artists who have to contemplate all of this. Meanwhile, the author of the book does not think that the chosen themes and subjects belong only to a distant Korean reality; perhaps they can reveal something about ourselves as well.