▲ The Meaning of 1/24 Seconds (stills), 1969 © Kim Kulim, Jung Kangja, Hammer Museum

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, an exhibition to shed new light on the flow of experimental art in Korean history, will be held at the Hammer Museum in the United States from February 11 to May 12.

This exhibition is the western U.S. tour of the Korean Experimental Art Exhibition, which was held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York from September last year to early January this year. The exhibition has sparked interest in Korean art from the East and will be relocated to the West and present works to a wider audience.

▲ Apple, 1976 © Sung Neungkyung, Hammer Museum

The exhibition will feature about 80 works by artists who had a major influence on the history of Korean experimental art from the 1960s to the 1980s, including Kim Kulim, Sung Neungkyung, and Jung Kangja.

Artists who were active in Korea during the transitional period of globalization based on authoritarianism at the time are showing their own creative and broad art world and still have a great influence on the Korean art world.

▲ Untitled (TV Stone Tower), 1982 © Park Hyunki, Hammer Museum

Young artists of that period responded to social changes caused by the rapid modernization of Korea by utilizing various media such as paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, and dance. Art historian Kim Mikyeong later named them 'Korean experimental artists' and held a meeting place with visitors from the western United States.

The director of the Hammer Museum said, "I am very happy that this exhibition is deeply related to Korean culture and that it will be held in Los Angeles, where the proportion of the Korean population is large". He also added, "The Korean artists who will be introduced at the exhibition are important figures who have added depth to the art research conducted over the past 60 years".

▲ Visual Sense I, II (Amusement of Visual Senses), 1967 © Kang Kukjin, Hammer Museum

Sayart / Nao Yim, yimnao@naver.com