The Korea Arts Council opened the Korean Pavilion exhibition “KOO JEONG A – ODORAMA CITIES” at the 60th Venice Biennale 2024 on April 17 in Venice, followed by the 30th anniversary special exhibition “Every Island is a Mountain” on April 19.

“KOO JEONG A – ODORAMA CITIES” is curated by Seolhui Lee (Chief Curator, Kunsthal Aarhus) and Jacob Fabricius (Director, Art Hub Copenhagen), and is represented by artist KOO JEONG A. This exhibition is an open call for anyone to participate in a survey on “fragrant memories of Korean cities and hometowns” from June 25 to September 30, 2023, and presents a new work that collects and analyzes nearly 600 stories from participants around the world through the medium of scent, which transcends all boundaries.

The Korea Pavilion presents a sculpture-installation consisting of all new works, both inside and outside. It is expected to be a sensory installation characteristic of KOO’s work, which fuses small, intimate experiences with site-specific immersive works to give new meaning to everyday space and time. Over the course of the seven-month exhibition, the Korean Pavilion will examine the ways in which scent play a role in memory through the various nuances of spatial encounters, providing an opportunity to explore the ways in which we perceive and recall space. The exhibition will be on view through November 24.

The world’s leading art magazines Freize, ArtReview, ArtAsiaPacific, Art Basel Stories and Artsy have already covered the Korean Pavilion, as have Ocula, artnet, Artibune and Wall Paper, Monocle, stayinart, Bijutsu Techo, and the South Chian Morning Post have conducted interviews with KOO JEONG A, Seolhui Lee, and Jacob Fabricius for publication next month, and interest in the Korean Pavilion from the international art world is high.

The 30th anniversary special exhibition of the Korean Pavilion, “Every Island is a Mountain,” which opened on April 19, also coincided with the Venice Biennale. The exhibition in Venice focuses on artistic thought and practice that crosses the boundaries of past, present, and future, individual and community, local and global, technology and art, and showcases the essence of contemporary Korean art by selecting the works of 36 artists (teams) who have participated in previous Korean Pavilion exhibitions over the past 30 years. A total of 82 works are on display, including works that have been on display since the museum’s opening in 1995 and recent new works.

“Every Island is a Mountain” begins with the ‘Archive Exhibition,’ a three-dimensional reconstruction of the last 30 years of the Korean Pavilion based on the collection of the Arts Archives of the Arts Council Korea. This is followed by an interior of a monastery with small rooms, a tranquil courtyard, and a spacious outdoor garden, overlapping the medieval period of Venice and contemporary Korea. Intermittent sound art from the middle ground surrounds the individual works, which exist like an archipelago, like an ocean.

In addition, the ‘transparent pavilion,’ a place of relaxation and sharing in the outdoor garden, will host public programs during the exhibition, sponsored by Lush Korea and curated in collaboration with local institutions in Venice. In June, a lecture performance will be organized in collaboration with the Madrid-based TBA21 Foundation, which focuses on research and art related to marine ecology, and Drifting Curriculum, a Seoul-based multidisciplinary curatorial research platform, to question the Biennale’s new vision in an era of climate crisis.

In August, ‘Floating Cinema,’ an alternative local film festival that takes place during the Venice Film Festival, will present a screening program featuring the video works of four of the exhibition’s artists. The public programs in Venice will also be presented via video on an online platform. The specific schedule of public programs in connection with the exhibition will be announced on the official website later.

An archive book, “The Last Pavilion,” which highlights the significance of the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in contemporary art and the achievements of international exchange, has been published to coincide with the opening of the exhibition. It can be downloaded in both Korean and English in e-book (PDF) format from the official website (www.venicebiennale.kr).

Choung Byoung Gug, the chairperson of Arts Council Korea, said, “This is an opportunity to properly recognize Korean artists who have recently gained global attention, and to showcase the status of Korean art globally,” and Anna Catharina Gebbers, curator of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, said “This exhibition has shown me that there are many great artists in Korea who are not yet well known.”

References

• 베니스비엔날레 한국관 홈페이지 (Venice Biennale Korean Pavilion Website)
  
• 베니스비엔날레 한국관 30주년 특별전시 홈페이지 (The 30th Anniversary Exhibition of the Korean Pavilon at the Venice Biennale Website)