Installation view
of 《A Faraway Today》 ©Kukje GalleryKukje Gallery Presents a special exhibition
《A Faraway Today》 on view
through July 20, at its hanok space. The exhibition examines how traditions
continue to evolve and transform our present-day reality, and how inherited
legacies from the past encounter languages of contemporary art.
The exhibition title, 《A Faraway Today》, suggests this temporality
of tradition—something that is “distant yet near,” or “dim yet still
lingering.” It gestures toward modes of tradition that lie outside
institutional frameworks while offering a space for reflection through their
resonance with the Hanok setting.
Installation view
of 《A Faraway Today》 ©Kukje GalleryKukje Gallery’s Hanok is a renovated
traditional Korean house originally built in the 1930s, where contemporary art
and historic architecture coexist. In this exhibition, the Hanok space is not
treated merely as a neutral backdrop, but as a living interactive structure
that actively engages with both the viewer’s senses and the artworks on view.
Each participating artist reconstructs forms, materials, and concepts rooted in
the past using different media and sensibilities, questioning what inherited
forms and meanings convey today within the language of contemporary visual
culture.
Curated by artist Park Chan-kyong—who has
worked extensively as a film director, curator, and writer—the exhibition
reflects his longstanding interest in tradition, folk belief, and Korean
modernity. Beginning his practice in the mid-1990s, Park explored the
psychological landscapes shaped by Korea’s division and the Cold War. His
subsequent work has critically examined how Korean modernity inherited and
redefined traditional idioms through the legacies of colonialism and
modernization. Rather than romanticizing the past, he focuses on
recontextualizing these vernacular practices within the shifting dynamics of
globalization and postcolonial discourse in the contemporary moment.
Installation view
of 《A Faraway Today》 ©Kukje GalleryThe five participating artists—Kim Beom, IM
Youngzoo, Cho Hyun Taek, Choe Sooryeon, and Choi Yun—use painting, drawing,
installation, object, and video to explore the lived experience of this
“distance” and trace the emotional residue left by the fading images and
remnants of the past. Their works provide a critical lens through which we can
reflect on the blind spots of modernity.
Rather than aiming to restore a
romanticized antiquity, 《A Faraway Today》 explores how the sensory presence of these traditions
resurface—suddenly and unexpectedly—within the flow of the present. The
exhibition goes beyond nostalgia or traditionalist sentiment, revealing how
contemporary art calls upon and modulates the language of tradition anew. It
resists institutional domestication, instead bringing forth the unresolved,
untamed vitality of what tradition might still become.
Participating
Artists: Kim
Beom, IM Youngzoo, Cho Hyun Taek, Choe Sooryeon, Choi Yun
