DOOSAN Gallery presents DOOSAN Curator’s Workshop Exhibition: Discrete Use of Reality, a program supporting promising curators, from January 13th to February 27th, 2016.

Discrete Use of Reality explores artists who perceive reality through an innovative perspective and absorb it as an instrument for their artistic expression.  The exhibition was inspired by three curators’ reflections on the difficulties of being an artist in reality today, which expand beyond financial hardships, and questions the ways in which artists practice their works in the harsh conditions of reality.  This exhibition focuses on 4 artists including Bona Park, Mok-Yon Yoo, Jiyoung Yoon, and Jeewon Yoon, to whom art is the very instrument of life and is thus their outlook on life, and proposes new perceptions and use of reality.

Bona Park freely traverses across the boundaries of life and art, shedding sharp and witty criticism on the sense of separation and other narratives in between the two realms. Park captures an imaginary island of Kotakina Blue, taken from the actual place Kota Kinabalu, in the video work Kotakina Blue #1 (2015), in which a foley artist repeatedly creates various sounds of a fictitious resort island. Mok-Yon Yoo reflects the various situations of his own reality into his work. In Artist Board Game (2013-), Yoo works out the difficulties he has faced in the system of ‘art world’ in the delightful form of games, and invites those who otherize and oppose him into his work. The reality which influences Jiyoung Yoon is intimately related to the artist in both physical and psychological manner. Yoon interweaves the relationship between resistance and coexistence in her reality through an exquisite language.  As shown in A Single Leg of Moderate Speed (2015), an element of tension rests between structures in her work while arriving at a point of compromise. Jeewon Yoon’s Untitled (Projection) (2015) deals with the process of perception, documentation and representation of image through subjects like mnemonics, map and art history. He retains his distance from reality and sheds sharp criticism on the influence the structure of reality has over our system of awareness.

Initiated in 2011, the DOOSAN Curator Workshop is a professional development program with the mission of discovering and supporting promising new curators who will present a fresh perspective within the Korean contemporary art field. Each year, the program selects three new curators and, over the course of one year, holds regular lectures, seminars, and workshops in which professionals from various disciplines are invited to share critical examinations of contemporary art theories and art scenes with the Workshop participants. Following the one-year education period, the Workshop participants are provided the opportunity to co-organize an exhibition to give shape to their year of study at DOOSAN Gallery. Heeseung Choi, Hyejung Jang, and Seolhui Lee, who were selected for the 2015 5th DOOSAN Curator Workshop, invited professionals to learn about writing as curators and facilitated workshops and seminars addressing the subjects of co-curated exhibitions and exhibition design.
 

Bona Park (b. 1977) graduated with a B.A. in English from Seogang University, and received her B.F.A. from Korea National University of Arts, and M.F.A. from Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.  She has held solo exhibitions at Sindoh Art Space (2015, Seoul, Korea), Gallery Chosun (2013, Seoul, Korea), and Ping Pong Art Space (2011, Taipei, Taiwan), and has participated in group shows and projects at SongEun ArtSpace (2015, Seoul, Korea), Delfina Foundation (2015, London, UK), Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (2014, Seoul, Korea), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2013, Seoul, Korea), Nam June Paik Art Center (2013, Yongin, Korea), and New Museum (2012, New York, NY, USA).

Mok-Yon Yoo (b. 1978) received his M.F.A. in Photography from Chungang University.  He had his solo exhibition at Project space SARUBIA (2015, Seoul, Korea), and has participated in various group exhibitions, at Art Sonje Center (2015, Seoul, Korea), Gyeongnam Art Museum (2015, Changwon, Korea), Amado Art Space (2014, Seoul, Korea), Kumho Art Museum (2013, Seoul, Korea), and Insa Art Space of the Arts Council Korea (2012, Seoul, Korea).

Jiyoung Yoon (b. 1984) received her B.F.A. in Sculpture at Hongik University, and M.F.A. in Sculpture at The Art Institute of Chicago.  She has shown her work in solo and two-person exhibitions at Being & Thing Archive (2015, Seoul, Korea), and The Bike Room Gallery (2013, Chicago, IL, USA), and has participated in various group exhibitions at Lodge Gallery (2015, Chicago, IL, USA), National Veterans Art Museum (2014, Chicago, IL, USA), Current Space Gallery (2014, Baltimore, MD, USA), and Russell Industrial Center (2012, Detroit, MI, USA).

Jeewon Yoon (b. 1985) graduated from Kookmin University with a B.F.A. in Painting. He has participated in projects and exhibitions at Audio Visual Pavilion (2015, Seoul, Korea), Nam June Paik Art Center (2015, Yongin, Korea), KT&G Sangsangmadang Gallery (2014, Seoul, Korea), The 4th Anyang Public Art Project: Public Story (2014, Anyang, Korea), Art Space Pool&Ggull (2012, Seoul, Korea), Kunsthalle Gwangju (2011, Gwangju, Korea), and Art Space Pool (2010, Seoul, Korea).