Doosan Gallery‘s exhibition of young curators seeks news ways to introduce artworks

Doosan Gallery is holding an exhibition curated by participants of its eighth Doosan Curator Workshop -- Yoo Eun-soon , Yu Ji-won and Lee Jin.

The exhibition “YourSearch, On-demand Research Service” by the three curators introduces 23 works by Ghim Da-hwan Lee Dong-geun, Kim Woong-hyun, Lee Yoon-seo and Jung Eu-gene.

The exhibition touts itself as a research service platform designed to provide individualized solutions and customized content to users. The curators become the platform developers, and the artists are content producers who work on demand. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to be platform users and potential investors.

By bringing the content provider-consumer platform to the exhibition, the three curators are trying to suggest a more sustainable way of introducing artworks, through which artists can make relatively consistent income by working on demand compared to holding exhibitions on a project basis, the gallery explained.

The artworks introduced at the exhibition are based on online research, but documentary elements are rarely found.

“We have tried to present different ways to respond to the ever increasing amount of information. Like in the successful cases of YouTube content creators, what personality or perspective you use to deliver certain information has become a more important element in dealing with information in the digital era than how well one presents it,“ said curator Yoo.

Each artwork comes with the artist’s own interpretation of pieces of information found online, creating alternative ways to re-read existing information. 

Artist Lee Yoon-seo presents a series of paintings based on images found on online platforms, including news and social media. Her quick renderings of various found images are the artist’s own attempt to capture how fast images are spreading and being reproduced on online platforms. Lee will continue to add more paintings to the exhibition. 

Meanwhile, artist Kim Woong-hyun has created an installation that allows visitors to go on a pseudo trip to Thailand. By re-fabricating facts and fictitious elements, Kim has created an imagined tour to the region.

Using unrealistic images from manga and the media of real accidents and disasters, Eugene Jung has made sculptures with construction materials common in Seoul to represent the Chernobyl disaster and Paul the Octopus.

The exhibition is partly a response to the growing number of research-based documentary artworks infiltrating the gallery space, the curator said. “Instead of delivering information as such, we have decided to present information that has been reproduced by artists who have their distinctive ways of expressions,” Yoo continued.

The Doosan Curator Workshop is a local program designed to support young Korean curators. The program selects three curators every year, and offers them art lectures, workshops, and seminars led by professionals of diverse fields.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)