Installation view of “Kishio Suga” at Johyun Gallery Seoul ©Johyun Gallery
Busan-based gallery ‘Johyun Gallery’ opened a new location in Seoul’s Shilla Hotel on May 23. The new location marks the gallery’s return to Seoul nine years after closing its Seoul exhibition space in 2015, which was located in the Nature Poem building in Cheongdam-dong, Seoul.
Johyun Gallery started in 1989 as Gallery World in Gwangalli, Busan, and took the lead in revitalizing the art scene in Busan by introducing Korean contemporary art, discovering local artists, and holding various experimental exhibitions. The gallery’s early exhibitions of Chung Chang-Sup, Park Seo-Bo, Lee Ufan, Yun Hyong-keun, and Kim Guiline, who were important figures in the Dansaekhwa school of Korean contemporary art at the time, demonstrated the gallery’s advanced understanding of Korean abstract painting and its deep understanding of the history of Korean contemporary art
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To date, the gallery has organized important exhibitions that are indispensable to the flow of Korean contemporary art history, and continues to discover and curate new and talented young artists as well as domestic and international masters.
The new venue, located in Seoul’s Shilla Hotel, opened with a solo exhibition of Kishio Suga, a leading figure in Japan’s mono-ha (もの派) movement. This solo exhibition of Kishio Suga extends from the large-scale exhibition presented last year at Johyun Gallery_Dalmaji located in Busan, and includes installation works from the 1990s, as well as flat object works and drawings created in 2020. Among these, two pieces will be unveiled for the first time in this exhibition. The exhibition runs through June 30.