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STRETCH AND RELAX:
ELASTIC TABOOS
Reinforcing the ever-ascending status
of contemporary Asian art, the
Kunsthalle Wien this month presents
Elastic Taboos, a major exhibition
of contemporary Korean art. With
installation work, performance,
painting and photography, the curators
of the show aim to tease out a sense
of what contemporary Korean art is,
yoking together work by artists of
various generations, from Lee Ufan,
born nearly 15 years before the Korean
War, to those who have only ever
known South Korea in boom times. Many
of the artists have not been shown
together before, or indeed as part of
a Korea-specific forum, and are either
expatriates or from second-generation
immigrant families living in the West.
In the accompanying catalogue, curators
Kim Seung-duk and Franck Gautherot LA LA LAND:
ask the artists whether they see any EDEN’S EDGE
specificity in contemporary Korean art. Mark Bradford, Black Venus, 2005
mixed media collage, 330 x 498 cm.‘Alienation and assimilation’ is the
Building on recent years of Berezdivin Collection. Courtesy Sikkema response of photographer Oh Hein-kuhn,
survey exhibitions dedicated Jenkins & Co., New Yorkwhose stark work features blank and
to the chronicling and staring schoolgirls disconnected from
stewardship of contemporary one another. Lee Noori, on the other
art in Los Angeles, the Hammer hand, whose paintings feature surreal
Museum presents its most of Lari Pittman’s canvases and hallucinogenic visions, points out
ambitious group show to date. – hyper-ornate orgies of that ‘Korean art is… in a period of
Organised by freshly appointed source and symbol – speak transition: it tries to free itself
Chief Curator Gary Garrels, across media lines to the from pessimism’. All of which suggests
Eden’s Edge brings together narrative and exuberant chaos a creative community in the process of
the work of 15 artists who of Elliott Hundley’s mixed-redefining its identity, traditions and
share little besides the media assemblage/installations taboos. Laura Allsop
crucible in which their of repurposed magazine and
diverse practices matured: advertising materials. The ELASTIC TABOOS: WITHIN THE KOREAN
LA during the past ten years. rest of the artists stake WORLD OF CONTEMPORARY ART, TO 10
However, correspondences do out their own territory in JUNE AT KUNSTHALLE WIEN, VIENNA
emerge between the ideas and this discourse surrounding WWW.KUNSTHALLEWIEN.AT
objects. Mark Bradford’s the state of contemporary art
inventive mixed-media in LA, and hold it as well,
collages and installations exhibiting the same serious,
that repurpose ordinary paper studious craftsmanship,
products into compelling profound and powerful instinct
monuments to the urban for semiotic meaning and
visual landscape seem eager historical context, and
to enter into dialogue with irreverent questioning of the
sculptor Matthew Monahan’s liveliness and relevance of
hybrid vision, which employs theory as their fellows.
a mix of materials and formal If Eden’s Edge makes one
idioms to explore the zone thing true of all ‘LA art’
between nature and industry. then it could be this: an
Ken Price’s sensual, almost engagement with the sensual
sexual abstract ceramics, with life of beauty, sex, luxury,
, 2003. Courtesy the artist their mottled, painterly, light, space and colour
infinitely organic surfaces, amid the struggle to remember
inviting to the eye and skin, a cultural past under
seem a natural counterpart constant assault by the
to the radiant, bespeckled future. Shana Nys Dambrot
Prophet Zero III and attenuated surrealism in the landscape paintings of EDEN’S EDGE:
Sharon Ellis. And the retro- 15 LA ARTISTS
futuristic image extravaganzas 13 MAY – 2 SEPTEMBER HAMMER MUSEUM,
LOS ANGELES
WWW.HAMMER.UCLA.EDU
Steven Gontarski,
ARTREVIEW three.lintwo.lin
p 31-40 Dispatches AR May07.indd32 32 30/3/07 01:06:27
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