BB&M | CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

  • BAE YOUNG-WHAN: SO NEAR SO FAR

    BAE YOUNG-WHAN: SO NEAR SO FAR

    21 March - 4 May 2024
    Image of BAE YOUNG-WHAN: SO NEAR SO FAR

BAE YOUNG-WHAN: SO NEAR SO FAR

March 21 – May 4, 2024

 

BB&M is pleased to present So Near So Far, a solo exhibition of new work by Bae Young-whan. Recognized for a practice that combines a keen awareness of vernacular beauty with neo-conceptual strategies, Bae is a key figure in the influential, albeit loosely defined, post-minjung generation of contemporary Korean artists who emerged in the late 1990s reckoning with the repercussions of Korea’s turbulent modernity. Often making use of humble, mundane elements (discarded wood from construction sites, broken bottles, sentimental song lyrics), his art is attuned to the ephemeral surfaces as well as the deeper structures of feeling that underlie Korean society. 

 

The present exhibition is centered around wall works that expand on the artist’s long-standing preoccupation with language, in particular the collective demotic of pop songs. Speaking to a peculiarly Korean strain of self-destructive, self-romanticizing masculinity, some of Bae’s most recognized works from the late 1990s to early 2000s made use of shattered liquor bottles to form sentimental Korean song lyrics on discarded wooden panels from construction sites. For this show, he’s taken the more universally familiar notes from three iconic songs—Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”—as the departure point for a series of works delineating the contours of his mind via EEG readings recorded as he performs the notes on a guitar. The result, rendered in 3-D reliefs assembled into abstract panels with expanses of translucent painted layers and gold-leafed crests and ridges, is aptly titled Mindscapes. While drawing on the conceptual tenets of his academic training in traditional Asian painting, Bae undertakes a distinctly contemporary engagement with questions revolving around the individual’s relationship to nature, culture, and society.

 

 

READ IN KOREAN