The First Silcheon Group Exhibition, Brochure, 1983. Image provided by MMCA Art Research Center Collection
Silcheon Group
* Source: Multilingual Glossary of Korean Art. Korea Arts Management Service
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Department of Art at Hongik University
Established in 1949, the Department of Art at Hongik University consists of one art theory department and eleven practice-based departments, including painting, Oriental painting, printmaking, sculpture, woodworking and furniture design, metal art and design, ceramics and glass, textile art and fashion design, visual communication design, and industrial design. In 1955, it moved from Jongro-gu, Seoul to the current location in Sangsu-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul. The history of the College of Fine Arts can be largely divided into the period of the Department of Fine Arts from 1949 through 1953, the period of the School of Fine Arts from 1954 through 1971, and the period of the College of Fine Arts from 1972 until now. In March 1953, the Department of Fine Arts produced the first six graduates, and in the following year the School of Fine Arts with three departments was established. In December 1971, it was upgraded to a college, which exists up to the present. Several exhibitions organized by its graduates are notable, including the Four Artists Exhibition held in 1956 as the first anti-National Art Exhibition (Daehanminguk misul jeollamhoe or Gukjeon) by the third and fourth classes of graduates and the Union Exhibition of Korean Young Artists held in 1967 by graduates from the 1960s as an effort to realize experimental art.
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Small group movement
A term describing the tendency of many artists in the 1980s to work in small groups, in which the application of many diverse methods, attitudes and values in mediums such as painting, sculpture and installation was common. These groups associated with neither the established modernist abstract art community or the Minjung Art community, which formed the primary two ideologically and formally opposed movements of the 1980s. Instead, artists within these small groups focused on individual approaches to production based on situational contingency, and deliberately declined to develop into larger organizations, unlike the artists of previous generations. The formalization, commercialization, and globalization of the art community ultimately resulted in the disbanding of most of the small groups during the 1990s. However, the works produced within these groups were indicative of the Korean post-modernist movement that was to come.
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Kwanhoon Gallery
A gallery which opened in 1979 in Insa-dong. Its name was originally the Kwanhoon Art Museum, but this was changed to Kwanhoon Gallery in the early 1990s following the Museum and Art Gallery Support Act. In the 1980s, the gallery held exhibitions featuring prominent art organizations such as Ecole de Séoul, Logos & Pathos, and Meta-Vox, as well as the Museum exhibition. The gallery became a foundational platform for experimental and avant-garde contemporary art in Korea.
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Hoengdan
Hoengdan was the name of an art group which was active only briefly from 1980 to 1983, and it was also the theme of their exhibition. Its establishment started from a reflection on Korean contemporary art in the 1970s, by artists who believed that art cannot turn a blind eye to social reality. The principal active members of Hoengdan included Kim Jinyeol, Kim Bo-jung, Jung Bocsu, Ko Kyeong-hun, Ahn Gyeonghui, Song Simi, Lee Gapyeol, and Park Geon. Hoengdan held their first exhibition from August 28 through September 3, 1980 in the Room B of the Exhibition Hall 1 at the Misulhoegwan (now ARKO Art Center). The exhibition themed around “two-dimensional works for three walls” was curated and participated by three artists, Kim Jinyeol, Chang Sukwon, and Ham Yeon-sik. It featured twenty experimental works. Their second exhibition was held from May 29 through June 3, 1981 at Kwanhoon Gallery. Kim Bo-jung, Kim Jinyeol, Song Simi, Chang Sukwon, and Ham Yeon-sik participated in it. The works displayed in the first and second exhibitions were rather abstract and experimental. However, from 1982 onward, concrete forms began to appear in their works. As a case in point, through his People series, Kim Jinyeol depicted the daily lives of ordinary people and the social oppression they experienced. Other artists also revealed unfortunate premonitions inherent in everyday lives and projected the bleak social conditions of the early 1980s onto their works. In 1982, Hoengdan participated in the exhibition The Innocence of Conscience: That Sound, which was organized by the DAMU Group and held at Kwanhoon Gallery, along with small art groups Jeongae, DAMU Group, and TARA. In 1983, it organized the exhibition Noise, Confusion, and Disturbance held from May 4 to 10 at Kwanhoon Gallery. Its third exhibition was held from November 24 to 30, 1983. Afterward, the group’s activities were discontinued. The discontinuation is not unrelated to the quick migration of the major players among figurative artists to the Hangang Museum when Jang Gyeongho, who led the organization of the exhibition Young Minds, moved to a curatorial position at the Hangang Museum, which opened in June 1984. Another reason for the group’s dissolution is disagreements among the founding members of Hoengdan regarding the visual representations of oppression in Korean society at the time. Kim Jinyeol was the only Hoengdan founding member who participated in the opening exhibition, The Grandiose Root, of the Hangang Museum. After a five-year hiatus, an exhibition of Hoengdan was held in April 1989 at Gallery Doll. The participating artists were Jeong Jeongsik, Ko Kyeong-hun, Yu Seongsuk, Park Jeongae, Kim Sanha, Jung Bocsu, Baek Dongmin, Ahn Gyeonghui, and Roh Jaesoon. Hoengdan tried to start anew, but there was no further activity after this exhibition.
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Seoul Art Coalition
The Seoul Art Coalition (SAC) was a solidarity community of small groups in the Seoul area that was formed in 1984 and was active until 1987. From October 1 to 3 in 1983, the “Three Days and Three Nights Discussion” was held in Daeseong-ri, Gapyeong, Gyeonggi-do Province. At the time, Ok Bonghwan, Kim Bongjun, Moon Youngtae, Chang Jinyoung, Choi Minhwa, Choi Youl, Hong Seonwung, and Hong Sungdam gathered to discuss the nature, direction, and challenges of an art movement. They decided to promote an art movement based on solidarity. It was agreed that each region would form an “art community” based not on the critical realism of “Reality and Utterance” but on folk realism. The idea was to form art communities in Seoul, Gwangju, Busan, Incheon, Jeju, and other regions and grow them into a national organization. Choi Minhwa immediately discussed the concept of an art coalition with Yoo Yeunbok and Park Jinhwa. Choi was designated as the person in charge of cartoons, Yoo Yeunbok for mural paintings, and Lee Ki-jung for prints. From January 1984, the SAC began hosting open forums to restore and build a healthy art. It compiled materials and printed 200 copies of Hyeondae misul (Contemporary art). In June of the same year, its members participated in Life Portrayed by 105 Artist, and in September they held an inaugural meeting for the “art coalition” and elected Choi Minhwa as the first director of planning. In October, the SAC published a print calendar Poems and Woodcut Calendars (Woorimadang). The SAC was officially launched in February 1985. The small groups that joined the SAC include Silcheon (Geurim dongin Silcheon), Hoengdan, Namu [Mokpan moin namu], Espa, the Committee of Sidaejeongsin(Zeitgeist) [Sidae jeongsin gihoek wiwonhoe], Mural Painting Organization Sipjangsaeng [Byeokhwa giheok sipjangsang], and Uksae. Its purpose was to “creatively develop the rich formal values of visual arts, fight against any factors that restrict free expression, and seek ways for artworks to be committed to the lives of people.” Simultaneously with its launching, the SAC held art fairs for the populace, such as Eulchuknyeon Group Art Festival and the Gangnam Art Market. In April, it published its bulletin Misul gongdongche (Art community). The publication continued until 1986 with a total of five volumes. In May, the SAC created and posted a hanging painting at the May Third Incheon Laborers Conference. In June, the first general assembly was held, and Son Kihwan was elected as the second director of planning. In July, Son Kiwhan, Park Jinhwa, and Park Buldong curated the exhibition Power of the Art by the Twenties but the police arrested the artists and confiscated their works. In February 1986, the Byeonginnyeon Group Art Festival was held at the Arab Art Museum. At the second general assembly in March, Yoo Yeunbok was elected as the third director of planning, and at the third general assembly in 1987, Park Jinhwa was elected as the fourth director of planning. On June 17, 1986, the SAC painted the mural Joy of Unification on the building in front of Sinchon Station, and on July 26, it did the mural Co-Living on the wall of Yoo Yeunbok’s house. These two murals were defaced by the state. Those who created the latter, including Yoo Yeunbok, Kim Jinha, Choi Byungsoo, Hong Hwanggi, and Kim Yongman, were indicted without detention. The SAC organized the exhibition Satire and Humor in August and the exhibition Art and Politics at Great Transition, in November 1987. In January 1988, the SAC members discussed its dissolution at a restaurant in Insa-dong and then disbanded. The SAC is the first collective of small groups that was formed after the agreement on turning the national organizations of Minjung art movement into art communities was made. They accomplished significant achievements in the popular art movement, mural movement, and art discourse.
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Sidaejeongsin (Zeitgeist)
Sidaejeongsin (Zeitgeist) is the first collective group formed in 1983 and remained active until 1987. In the early spring of 1983, Kim Hyeonsu, the director of the Third Museum of Art, asked Park Geon to curate an exhibition to make used of the cancelled exhibition period. Together with Moon Youngtae, Park Geon formed the Committee of Sidaejeongsin and tried a collective that gathered for exhibitions and publications and then dispersed. Moon oversaw organizing exhibitions, and Park assumed the task of publications. Moon and Park first met in April 1980 when Moon visited Park’s exhibition Strength in Busan. The two became close when Park came to Seoul and participated in exhibitions Young Minds and Traverse. Their goal was to weave together the sporadic small art movements of the early 1980s with a larger “cultural force.” Their intentions can be found in the following sentence printed in small letters on the cover of the mook (magazine-book) Sidaejeongsin: “’life’ to run toward from all directions; touch, pinch and embrace.” Park Geon stated that the spirit of an artist who sees through the times is "Zeitgeist.” In the preface of the first volume of Sidaejeongsin (Zeitgeist), the art critic Kim Yoon-Soo explained that “sidaejeongsin (zeitgeist) comes from the insight and recognition that the spirit making up our lives today is indeed in a state of corruption and irreversibility” and that “zeitgeist is the awakened spirit leading national history against all the phenomena, mindsets, institutions, and systems, all of which prevent all human beings from living a dignified life.” The first Sidaejeongsin exhibition was held in April 1983 at the Third Museum of Art. The fourteen artists who participated in the exhibition were Kang Yobae, Ko Kyeong-hun, Kim Bojung, Kim Jinyeol, Moon Youngtae, Park Geon, Park Jae-dong, Ahn Changhong, Yun Yeogeol, Lee Nagyeong, Lee Chulsoo, Lee Taeho, Jung Bocsu, and Choi Minhwa. Park Geon, who had edited textbooks at a university, edited and published the first volume of the mook Sidae jeongsin, which also served as an exhibition catalogue, in 1984. From then on, the group name, exhibition name, and mook name were collectively referred to as “Sidaejeongsin.” By 1987, they had organized a total of five exhibitions and published three volumes of the Sidaejeongsin. The theme of the first volume was “The Vitality of the Minjung Art Movement,” that of the second volume was “The Aesthetics of Liberation: Murals, Photography, Prints, and Cartoons,” and that of the third volume was “Sexuality in Our Time.” The second edition of the Sidaejeongsin exhibition traveled to Maek Gallery (Busan), Ijo Gallery (Masan), and Maekhyang Gallery (Daegu). The third edition was a print exhibition organized in collaboration with the Art School for Citizens. The fourth edition was held at Min Art Gallery, and the fifth edition was held on the theme of “what do our children draw” at the same place. In 1985, the National Art Association (Minjok misul hyeopuihoe) was established. As it published its bulletin in 1986 and Min Art Gallery, an exhibition space specializing in Minjung art was established, the Committee of Sidaejeongsin concluded its activities with the fifth exhibition. Afterwards, Moon Youngtae devoted himself to the activities of the National Art Association, and Park Geon engaged himself in the activities of the National Teachers’ Council for Democratic Education Promotion [Minju gyoyuk chujin jeonguk gyosa hyeopuihoe].
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