Pacific Asia Museum presents Constructed Visions: New Media from Korea an exhibition on view from August 23 through November 24, 2013.
This exhibition introduces four contemporary Korean artists who construct striking examinations of their environments, both urban and rural, using the seemingly infinite possibilities of digital media such as video and photography. For example, in Atta Kim’s photographs, busy cities such as New York and Paris become eerie ghost towns as rows of cars and crowds disappear due to extended exposure times, sometimes up to eight hours. While Kim captures known locations modified by time, Minkyung Lee intentionally creates a new reality in her images. She ‘builds’ her own spaces in miniature and then captures them with the camera; some are then subjected to further manipulation, thereby creating layers of constructions for the viewer to unpack. Junebum Park’s videos capture mundane moments in busy cityscapes such as pedestrian and automotive traffic, or the passing of weather over a building, but deliver an uncanny sense of omniscient observation through the insertion of a figure at a super-human scale. In his Tree series, Myoung Ho Lee questions the concepts of reality, experience and representation by forcing the viewer to look at trees in their natural surroundings, isolated by artificial backgrounds and lighting.
This exhibition is part of a year-long series that is designed to provide contemporary perspectives on visual art in Asia from four different countries: Japan, Korea, Israel and Pakistan. Begun with Takashi Tomo-oka, the series addresses a variety of underlying conceptual issues and cultural questions, some of which may challenge viewers’ assumptions about Asian art.
This exhibition is generously supported by the Pasadena Art Alliance, Los Angeles County Arts Commission and Mike and Sookie Garrison. www.pacificasiamuseum.org