Media art
Media art refers to artworks produced using media scientific technology. It is also called new media art. The term became popularized as it was used by Les Levine in the Software exhibition held at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1970. Media art utilizes as its main media the primary means of communication in contemporary society, including books, magazines, newspapers, films, radio, televisions, videos, and computers. In and after the 1980s, a vast body of works that were based on computer technology and emphasized interaction between them and the audience were created, leading to the emergence of interactive art.
Installation
In a general sense, the term “installation” refers to the display or arrangement of artwork within an exhibition. In a stricter sense, the term “installation” can also refer to an art work specifically based in its wider display environment. Such installation art often attempts to enable the audience to become part of the new environment that the work creates. In this circumstance, the artwork becomes defined not only by its space, but also in terms of the relationship between the work, space and the audience.
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.
Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA)
Korea’s first municipal art museum, the Seoul Museum of Art was established at the site of the Gyeonghui palace park, where Seoul High School used to be located, in 1988. On May 17, 2002, the museum moved to Jung-gu, Seoul, to the former location of the Supreme Court of South Korea. In addition to the main branch, the Seoul Museum of Art also operates the Seoul Museum of Art (South), which opened on September 2, 2004; Seoul Museum of Art (North), which opened in September 24, 2013; SeMA Nanji Residency, which opened in April 2006; SeMA Warehouses, which opened in August 2016; Nam June Paik Memorial House, which opened in March 2017; and SeMA Bunker, a multipurpose art space that opened in October 2017. Notable exhibition projects of the museum include the Seoul Mediacity Beinnale, a biennial media art event held since 2000, and the Seoul Photo Festival, an annual event held since 2010.