The new year has just started, but there are still a few exhibitions that opened in 2015 that you may be able to catch in the next few weekends. One of them is "Korea now! Craft, Design, Fashion and Graphic Design in Korea", closing tomorrow at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
Organised in partnership with the Korea Craft & Design Foundation, the event is perfect for design fans looking for inspiring ideas. There are indeed around 700 works of art by 150 artists, artisans, interior, fashion and graphic designers on display in the museum's temporary exhibition spaces.
The scale of the event is impressive and the exhibition starts with a journey through the decorative arts and craft, that could also be interpreted as a study of different materials including lacquer, mother-of pearl, Hanji paper, and metalwork.
Interior design pieces include circular chairs and angular wooden couches, but there is a lot to see and take in. The furniture by Wonmin Park, trained at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, is particularly interesting as it combines opaque colours with resin, but so are Soh Eun-myung's cupboard made with wood and colourful elastic bands, and Song Seung-yong's hybrid "Object O" birch chair and modular Korean paper (Hanji) lampshade.
Ceramics are divided into three main themes - Celadon ware, Buncheong ware and white porcelain. Celadon, developed during the Koryo dynasty (918-1392), is being reinterpreted in simple and more contemporary forms in the bowls by Lee Ga-jin, while Ree Soo-jong employs the Buncheong technique to create pieces that combine traditional skills with modern elements and graphic designs, and the Joseon period (1392-1910), is represented by the work of Kwon Dae-sup.
Gold and silverware is illustrated by tableware by Kim Dong-hyun and Kim Hyeong-jun, while the art of weaving hanji paper is represented by the creations of Lee Young-soon and Kang Sung-hee.
A traditional Korean Hanok house with no doors and with very little furniture, bamboo work and tea ceremony services complete this vision of the traditional Korean art of living.
The same techniques employed for home objects - lacquer, mother-of-pearl inlay and gold-and-silverware - are reinvented for contemporary jewellery, a form of art in which experimental designers have also introduced new materials to create dramatically new shapes.
Kwon Seul-gi and Moon Choon-sun employ for example plastic and silicon; Kim Hee-Joo works with natural materials such as leather; Min Bog-ki and Sim Hyunseok are more faithful to classical materials such as gold and silver, while Park Jeong-hye designs pieces characterised by futuristic silhouettes such as a collar shaped like a spiked coral formation.
Fashion fans will enjoy the garments and accessories (over 100) on display in a dedicated section. The exhibition's artistic director Suh Young-hee came up with a non-chronological arrangement of the exhibition, organised around the five cardinal colours of the traditional Korean spectrum - red, yellow, black, blue and white.
Each colour in the exhibition evokes the work of one creator: red is associated with the brightly colours and patterns of Lie Sang-bong's creations; yellow echoes the opulence of André Kim's costumes; the black stands for the younger generation of Korean designers; blue symbolises the avant-garde graphic pieces covered in figures and letters by one of the most original menswear designer, Jung Wook Jun (Juun.J), and white is used for the transparency and lightness of Jin Te-ok's silhouettes.
Jin Teok's studies of the traditional Hanbok (a bright, short top with a billowing skirt with a high waist) in every shade of white (it is worth remembering here that traditional Korean dress allowed colour only for the upper classes, while white was the colour designating the rest of the population) are conceived in this exhibition as artworks.
Other young designers featured include Pai Sung-youn & Jung Hyuck-seo (Steve j Yoni P), Lee Suktae (Kaal E. Suktae), Kwak Hyun-joo (Kwak hyun joo collection) and Choi Chulyong (Cy Choi), whose work is inspired by a variety of contemporary urban cultures and mythologies, ranging from 1950s America to Punk, Hip Hop and K-Pop.
The authentic and replica traditional Hanbok costume is interpreted in this section as an essential source of inspiration for all these creators and for Western fashion houses, that's why the curators included in this event Hanbok-inspired dresses by Chanel as well (as you may remember, in May 2015 the house showcased its Cruise Collection in Seoul).
The third floor features instead artists who have made a visual impact with their graphic work: in this space there are over two hundred screenprinted posters, books and magazines by approximately twenty artists. Each of them looks at a different theme, from the use of colour or geometric shapes to patterns, dynamism and symbolism.
Since Korea didn't have a national tradition when it came to graphic art, this can be considered as a relatively new discipline that emerged with key events such as the proclamation of independence in 1945 and the Seoul Olympics in 1988.
Inspired by the poetry of the Dada movement and the modernist poet Yi Sang, Ahn Sangsoo is considered as the father of Korean graphic design and a major influence on young designers. His trademark style mixes geometry and linguistic codes such as the Hangul alphabet. There is also a section dedicated to Park Kumjun, founder of the 601 Bisang studio, and involved in the Paju Book City cultural complex, which has more than fifty publishing houses, libraries and bookshops.
The younger generation is represented by the Practice studio, the Therewhere studio, and graphic designers Kim Bo-huy, Chris Roe and Park Yeounjoo, who seem more open to Western influences. The graphic art section closes with a spotlight on the work of Kim Dohyung and Kim Na.
A major disappointment for younger visitors going to see this exhibition may be the lack of a proper section dedicated to K-pop bands and artists, but the event definitely offers young people the chance to learn more about traditions and innovation via clever juxtapositions.
The best point about this event is definitely the fact that it remains suspended between craftsmanship and new techniques and technologies, showing the close ties that these creators have with their native culture, but also their passion for assimilating modern inspirations.
Curators tended indeed to create comparisons and links between one artist and the other: Chung Haecho, one of the incontestable masters of lacquer, is for example shown with the young creator Lee Kwang-ho's alternative approach to this technique, while the furniture of Lee Sam-woong and Choi Byung-hoon illustrate the ancient techniques of steam bending wood.
Randomly spotting cool trends for the future is a collective favourite sport especially in the crucial last weeks of a year and in the early days of the next one, but this exhibition proves that, by carefully studying an object, we may be able to understand more about its past and the culture that generated it and even get a glimpse of our collective future.
All images in this post courtesy of Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris.
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