Peppermint Candy and Multiple/Dialogue ∞ at Seoul MOCA

Last weekend we got a nice group of art-loving friends together and headed down to Seoul’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which is located in the Seoul Grand Park complex. Another friend had been raving about the Peppermint Candy exhibit she had seen there, and we wanted to be sure to see it before it closes on February 15th.

This was our first visit to the Seoul MOCA, and we were thoroughly impressed. If you haven’t made a trip there yet, do yourself a favor and go. Preferably before February 7th, when Kang Ik-Joong’s year-long exhibition, Multiple/Dialogue ∞, will be coming down. It really should not be missed.

“Multiple/Dialogue ∞” is a stunning, prolific and multi-layered body of work filling the massive space of the MOCA’s spiral-shaped Rampcore Gallery from top to bottom. Comprised of over 60,000 of Kang’s ’3×3 inch’ works, the barrage of imagery and textures performs several, simultaneous functions, as the title, Multiple/Dialogue ∞, suggests. First, Multiple/Dialogue ∞ is a comprehensive retrospective of Kang’s prodigious output of work dating back to the early 1980′s. Second, it serves as an homage to Kang’s artistic mentor Nam June Paik, with the sensory-overload of Kang’s 60,000 images echoing the same effect created by Paik’s famous video pieces that flash and vibrate with a flood of endless visual content. Lastly, Multiple/Dialogue ∞ is meant to reinvent and give new life to Paik’s towering work, ‘The More the Better,’ that dominates the center of the Rampcore Gallery. Indeed, “The More the Better” seems to have been Kang’s motto, as evidenced in his mind-blowing volume of work.

I was completely in awe of this exhibition, it is nothing short of a multi-sensory delight.

Also very excellent was the Peppermint Candy exhibition. It was originally assembled to serve as the first, full-scale introduction of Korean contemporary art for the South American audience, and was shown in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in Santiago, Chile before coming back home to the MOCA. Evidently, it was very well received there and it is easy to see why. The exhibition, which is broken into three sections, ‘Made in Korea,’ ‘New Ghost Town,’ and ‘Plastic Paradise.’ and traces various threads of development in Korean contemporary art since 1980, such as nationalism, the rise of capitalism, problems of consumption and commoditization of culture, and the challenges of Korea’s incredibly rapid urbanization. The show was really well curated in this regard, with these sub-sections of the exhibit helping to illuminate the overarching issues and motifs that have captured the attention of Korean artists during the last three decades.

In addition to these special exhibitions, there is an excellent permanent collection as well that highlights some of the best 2d, sculpture and photography produced in the last century. Of special note is the gorgeous collection of works on hanji (traditional Korean paper) that is not to be missed.

In short, go to the MOCA and see these excellent shows. We had an absolutely delightful afternoon there, and I can assure you that you will not be disappointed.

-Adam