The Gyeonggi Young Artist Project 2021 is intended to support young artists based in Gyeonggi Province to create new work, and to provide them with opportunities for exhibition as part of a project to support young artists. Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art has continued the projects to discover and support young artists working in Gyeonggi Province through a variety of competition programs including The Breath of Fresh, Quantum Jump, Gyeonggi Young Artist Contest and Young Artist Project since 2013. In this year’s Gyeonggi Young Artist Project, an experimental exhibition using the architectural structure of the Museum by inviting an artist instead of holding a competition is organized and presented. Artist Bac Ho Un, who was finally selected for the project, examines unpredictable and different aspects of life by turning the Museum’s glass wall panels which have become construction waste into the main material of the exhibition.

Bac, who works with text, painting and installation, delivered socially critical messages during the early days of his practice and has dealt with personal problems such as internal obsessions, communication and human relationships since 2016. Whereas he focused on criticizing the absurdity of society, feeling the gap between ideal and reality, in his early work, he moved on to bridge the gap in life in a manner to observe and change himself in the given reality. In this exhibition DIFFRACTION, the artist actively uses the circumstances of the Museum’s construction and highlights individuals who gradually grow while responding to the events and happenings occurring in life every moment and the points of their change, thereby seeking new possibilities on the other side of reality. ‘Diffraction’ has a meaning of open possibilities of life towards different directions, taking the form of a line that continues despite a repeated refraction.

The works on display in DIFFRACTION composed of glass wall panels and shards of glass which were parts of the body of the Museum building are: A Field of Glass Shards, A Hill of Glass Shards, Glass Passage and Marks of Glass Shards. Diverse forms of small broken pieces of glass that are piled up, spread and stepped on along the route from the outdoor deck connected to the Project Gallery to the inside of the gallery forms an imaginary road stretching out and curving several times. Lights on a number of sharply broken shards of glass scatter into all directions and refract while crossing and absorbing each other. The sharp transparency and precarious sense of weight of glass create anxiety and tension in the space, while lights go around and reach the eyes of visitors, glowing quietly. By refining discarded glass, the artist enables visitors to discover values of new changes in their own place and share empathy and comfort together, although the process of looking at and of passing through the difficulties of reality that we encounter like fate is accompanied by pain.

On the last day of the exhibition(November 14), there will be a talk with the audience through questions about the exhibition and stories about curves in life. We will also hold an event to choose one of the visitors' reviews on the exhibition and present the crystal trophy named ‘The Sculpture of the Audience’ and prize money to the winner.

Minji Kang

Curator of Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art

<Copyright(c)2002 GGC All rights reserved.>