BURN TO SHINE, a solo exhibition by the Swiss contemporary artist Ugo Rondinone, is currently on view at Museum San in Wonju, Korea. The exhibition marks the artist's largest solo exhibition in Korea to date, featuring a selection of his signature works alongside the museum's architecture, designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The exhibition features the cycles and relationships of life and nature, and the human existence and experience shaped by them, which Rondinone has been reflecting on for the past 30 years.

Spanning the museum's three galleries, the Nam June Paik Hall, and the outdoor stone garden, the presentation presents more than 40 works including sculptures, paintings, and videos. Central to the exhibition is the performance video burn to shine, which creates an overwhelming sensory experience with intense sound and body movements. In collaboration with the French Moroccan choreographer Fouad Boussouf, the work combines traditional rituals from Maghreb, Africa, with contemporary dance. Featuring male and female dancers dancing around a bonfire in an infinite loop, the work festively celebrates and commemorates life, while exploring the boundaries between life and death.

nuns + monks, a series of giant bronze casted sculptures are installed across the Nam June Paik Hall and the outdoor stone garden, encouraging a binary reflection of one’s inner self and the surrounding nature. Standing in the center of the Paik Nam June Pavilion is a monumental 4-meter high sculpture aweing visitors with its solemn atmosphere under natural light, reminiscent of medieval saints.

Meanwhile, the two works on display in the galleries on the first and second floors of the museum—your age and my age and the age of the sun and your age and my age and the age of the moon—are ongoing participatory projects, comprised of over 2,000 drawings by approximately 1,000 children in Wonju. Displayed in identical formats, the two sets of works, each symbolizing the sun and the moon, resonate with each other. Other works include the mattituck series, which depicts the sunset and moonrise; and a series of horse sculptures in blue glass, including beaufort sea and celtic sea. BURN TO SHINE in on view through September 18, 2024.

PARKing CHANce, an artist collective consisting of the photographer Park Chan-wook (who had a solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery Busan in 2021) and the contemporary artist Park Chan-kyong, is participating in Sacred Threads at Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, Switzerland. The exhibition examines how ancestral knowledge has evolved and continues to influence contemporary life and art. The narratives that connect us to our past and future are drawn from various social devices such as governance structures, the signifier and the signified, and the relationships between nature and technology.

PARKing CHANce’s Night Fishing (2011), winner of Golden Bear Award from the International Short Film category at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, explores Korean rituals and shamanism. The work studies gut, a spiritual ceremony in Korean shamanism that creates a space of contemplation, where one can feel connected to transcendental beings. Through this ritual, PARKing CHANce examines Korea’s ancestral religions while exploring the realm of human existence, crossing the boundaries between reality and virtuality. As the Park brother’s first co-production, the film has been applauded for expanding the boundaries of Korean cinema.

Sacred Threads runs through April 28, 2024, with five artists(teams) from different continents, telling stories of identity, history, and displacement employing various spiritual elements.

First-generation Korean woman sculptor Kim Yun Shin and the Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX are participating in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Having traversed disparate regions and cultures throughout their careers, both artists present works at the Giardini that reflect the complexity of global migration and hybrid cultural vocabularies that define our age, in accordance with this year’s theme-Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere.
Kim Yun Shin presents four wood and four stone sculptures—all of which come from her Add Two Add One, Divide One Divide Two series. The wood sculptures employ species such as Korean red pine and walnut trees, while her stone sculptures have been carved from semi-precious stones including onyx and jasper. The artist’s time-honored journey as a “stranger” exploring unfamiliar landscapes and places is evident in her particular formal vocabularies that remain embedded in her work.
Meanwhile, SUPERFLEX presents an updated rendition of their work, Foreigners, Please Don’t Leave Us Alone With The Danes! (2002). The exhibited work centers around posters that read “FOREIGNERS, PLEASE DON’T LEAVE US ALONE WITH THE DANES!,” raising awareness of the refugee crisis and further criticizing the reactionary immigration politics in Denmark. The artist collective chose to print the text using black on a blaring orange background, creating an eye-catching design reminiscent of a public billboard, framing universal concerns surrounding foreigners, immigrants, refugees, and diasporic communities.

Works by Ha Chong-Hyun and Sungsic Moon are currently being showcased as part of the special exhibition Perfectly Imperfect: Korean Buncheong Ceramics at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, USA. Marking the first exhibition to be organized under the agreement with the National Museum of Korea to support the Denver Art Museum’s Korean Gallery, signed in December 2022, the exhibition illuminates the formative aesthetics of Korean art through the theme of Buncheong ceramics, a historical art form that bridges tradition and modernity.

The exhibition features more than 70 Korean Buncheong ceramics from the 15th century to the present, alongside modern and contemporary paintings and drawings that resonate with the unique expression of Buncheong ceramics. Among works displayed include the Dansaekhwa pioneer Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 93-005, in which the substantial materiality of bae-ap-bub, a method of pushing paint from the back to the front of the hemp cloth, connects with the imperfect, playful, and unconventional technique of Buncheong ceramics. In addition, 16 oil drawings by Sungsic Moon, created by scratching the thick oil paint surface with a pencil, establish a profound connection across time, echoing the intricately detailed techniques of Korean Buncheong ceramics. The exhibition continues until December 7, 2025.

Latter Genesis: Ana & Carl, a solo exhibition by the artist Kim Yong-Ik, is on view at the Bongsan Cultural Center in Daegu. Known for his longstanding conceptual approach to art, Kim has challenged the absoluteness, completeness, and uniqueness of modernism. In this exhibition, the artist articulates his vision for the “Latter Genesis,” described in his notes as a society marked by a harmonious accordance between the values of Yin and Yang. Here, the sole pursuit of growth and development associated with modern capitalism—the Yang values—is mediated by the promotion of Yin values rooted in care and reciprocity.

At the heart of the exhibition lies Latter Genesis: Ana & Carl (2024), an installation featuring 270 bricks reminiscent of works by the 20th-century minimalist Carl Andre. The blood-stained bricks evoke the artistic style of Ana Mendieta, the feminist artist and Andre's wife, hinting at a mysterious incident that has taken place. While referencing a moment in art history, the work distorts the structure of bricks—representative of Yang, or masculine value—by adding blood—symbolic of Yin, or feminine value. In doing so, Kim advocates for the equitable recognition of both artists.

Kim's conceptual approach, marked by an enduring inquiry into “what is art?” and “what can art do?” through the appropriation and modification of modernist principles, permeates the entire exhibition, from its conception to its execution. Rather than being directly shaped by the artist's hands, Latter Genesis: Ana & Carl was realized by a curator who was only given conceptual instructions via texts and drawings. Displayed alongside the work are the artist's notes, sketches, and emails exchanged between the curator and the artist, highlighting the contextual background of the exhibition and enhancing the understanding of each work.

Latter Genesis: Ana & Carl continues until April 21, 2024.

Currently on view at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exeter, UK, is ARTIST ROOMS Bill Viola, a solo exhibition of the internationally renowned video artist Bill Viola. A pivotal figure in establishing video as a significant form of contemporary art, Viola has explored universal human experiences such as birth, death, and the unfolding of consciousness since the early 1970s.

The exhibition highlights The Passions series by the artist, acclaimed for his precision and simplicity that incorporate influences from painting, photography, and cinema. Begun in 2000, this series is inspired in large part by Viola’s study of European religious paintings of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as his personal experience of loss with the death of his parents. Appearing like moving paintings, the series is a silent meditation on time, ritual, and human emotion.

The three featured works on view employ extreme slow-motion techniques to convey the intensity and complexity of emotions, navigating the extremes of human sentiment. They include Catherine’s Room (2001), portraying a woman undertaking a series of daily rituals at different times of the day across five screens; Four Hands (2001), where the hands of three generations of a family slowly perform predetermined gestures; and Surrender (2001), depicting two figures in increasing states of anguish, gradually lowering their heads into the water. ARTIST ROOMS Bill Viola continues until June 2, 2024.

Kwon Young-Woo, Byron Kim, and Lee Ufan participate in Lineages: Korean Art at The Met, a special exhibition that celebrates the 25th anniversary of the ‘Arts of Korea’ gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA. Showcasing works ranging from the 12th century to the present day, including pieces from the museum’s collection as well as important international loans, the exhibition displays the history of Korean art in broad strokes through four overarching themes—lines, things, places, and people.

Works on view include various reinterpretations of traditional materials and calligraphic techniques, such as Kwon Young-Woo’s Untitled (1984), created by cutting hanji paper with a sharp tool and letting blue-gray ink and gouache seep through the incisions, and Lee Ufan’s From Line (1979), which captures the traces of repeated lines drawn from top to bottom. Also on view are two paintings from Byron Kim’s Goryeo Green Glaze series, which depict the subtle color variations of Goryeo celadon on large canvases, exploring the aesthetic traditions of ancient art.

By highlighting the formation of lineages and histories shaped by Korean artists, the exhibition delves into topics and methodological applications that have inspired generations of Korean artists. The exhibition continues through October 20, 2024, with some displayed objects rotating during its duration.