This exhibition presents a selection of photobooks and related photographs by Kyungwoo Chun, who presented his first solo show in Denmark at Galleri Image in 2001.
As an initiator and co-author of different art projects with public participation, Chun perceives the photobook as an expanded exhibition space with intimate relationship between images and viewer for a new breath of images. He also sees it as a tangible object a democratic ways of sharing art works beyond collecting art for limited people. To him, compiling the images into a paper version of the whole experience rather than one involving a screen is like building a house or writing a choreography.
The encounter with Galleri Image 20 years ago was a significant part of his artistic career in the international art scene and since that time, numerous cooperative projects between Kyungwoo Chun and Galleri Image have been realized in Europe and Korea.
For this exhibition commemorating this special 20 years of cooperation with Galleri Image, Chun specially selected the books which were published during the period in which he cooperated with different institutions and publishing houses for photography, performance, and public art.
The selection of books in the exhibition include Being a Queen, which was a project hosted by Galleri Image in Aarhus and Copenhagen, and published in cooperation with the Museum of Photography Seoul (2009, Galleri Image, The Museum of Photography Seoul), Kyungwoo Chun-Photographs, Video Performances(2005, Hatje Cantz), Kyungwoo Chun-Photographs (2010, IANN Books, Seoul), Thousands(2008, Hatje Cantz), Interpreters (2014, The Museum of Photography Seoul), The Weight (2020, Van Zoetendaal Publishers, Amsterdam), and the most recent book The Listener (2021, Laznia-Center for Contemporary Art, Gdansk) among others.
Kyungwoo Chun (*1969 in Seoul) has worked for many years on photography projects and initiated performances in which the audience is actively involved. Chun attained international recognition through his portraits, many of which have a characteristic blurriness in their movements – the consequence of extended exposure times. As diverse as the artistic approaches seem at a first glance, Chun considers both the performances and the photographs to be in equal measure “visible manifestations of that which is not visible.”
Chun has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in both Korea and abroad, and his works are represented in major museum collections including Musée Mac/Val in Vitry-sur-Seine, Huis Marseille-Museum of Photography in Amsterdam, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Museet for Fotokunst Odense, Laznia Center for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, The Museum of Photography Seoul, and National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea (MMCA). He is a professor of the department of photography at Chung-Ang University and also curates projects for his students.
www.kyungwoochun.com
Images:
Kyungwoo Chun, Simultan #5, 2010
Kyungwoo Chun, One-Hour Portrait #8, 2002
Kyungwoo Chun, Face of Face #3, 2016
Kyungwoo Chun, Being a Queen, 2007-2009
Kyungwoo Chun, Versus #4, 2007
From the book bild.klang.los, 2009
