This April, many signature Korean museums host ambitious shows looking to educate audiences about the country's rich artistic history.
From April until July, Kangneung Museum invites visitors to an exhibition which looks at Kim Whanki's "New York Period". Considered to be one of the fathers of Korean Abstraction, Kim Whanki's body of work is broadly categorised in "Tokyo Period", "Seoul Period", "Paris Period" and "New York Period". The latter covers the last 11 years of the artist's life. The exhibition features a total of 100 works, both paintings and drawings, centered around blue dots, lines, and planes - a reference to Kim Whanki's hometown, the stars above and the sea in the distance.
Hoam Art Museum hosts an exhibition of Joseon's representative painter Jeongjae Jeongseon (1676~1759). He is known for establishing the Jinkyung style of landscape painting which uses unique strokes to portray the nature of the Korean peninsula. His style has a notable influence on the later generation of painters. The exhibition features a total of 165 items from the collections of 18 institutions and 2 individuals and is organised with the support of Samsung Foundation for Culture.
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art hosts "Surrealism and Korean Modern Art", part of a long-standing initiative to re-highlight neglected modern Korean artists active in different genres. In this specific show, the MMCA examines those Korean painters who worked in Surrealism. Even though this movement never became mainstream in Korea, there are a number of artists who tried their hand in it and several who continuously painted in this style.
In his latest solo exhibition, artist Lee Kang-Wook explores the mysteries of the universe through geometric shapes and colorful reflections. The show features 140 works inspired by the Hindu classic The Upanishads.
The series is a visual exploration of the order and harmony of the universe embodied in geometric shapes such as dots, lines, and planes. Flows and lines of connection symbolise the interconnectedness and depth of the Divine design. Studying the nature of one extreme and its polar opposite, the artist discovered that they are not only very similar but should be understood as one.
And lastly for this month, artist Kwon Ki-Soo presents his latest works from the "Dong-guri series", Dong-guri being the name of the fictional character he invented who inhabits the world of his artistic practice.
Kwon Ki-Soo's art tries to merge East and West, to re-invent the Korean literati landscapes with pop-art colours and quirky animation characters. His work is an attempt to bridge tradition and modernity.
See all shows from April 2025 here.