Kim Chongyung, Work, 1965, Marble, 65×33×33cm. MMCA
Modern and contemporary sculpture
* Source: Multilingual Glossary of Korean Art. Korea Arts Management Service
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Conceptual Art
An artistic style and philosophical approach that originated in the United States and Europe in the 1960s. Conceptual artists valued the intangible ideas and processes of the art work as being at least of equal importance to the ultimate art product. In the West, this conceptual approach became critically prominent during the 1970s. In Korea, the term refers more broadly to the work of artists who have experimented with the subversion of sculptural and aesthetic norms. Such artists were active in the Korean Avant Garde Association (AG, established in 1969) and the Space and Time group (ST, established in 1971), creating a comprehensive movement of Korean conceptual artists whose work includes installations, performances, and outdoor work.
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Welded sculpture
A welded sculpture is an art work created through the welding of different structural and material metal elements. Within Western art welded sculptures rose to fashion during World War II and the immediate post-war period, and this style of work was introduced to Korea in the 1950s, with many influential pieces debuting at the National Art Exhibition (Gukjeon) in 1957. These Korean welded sculptures often expressively attempted to highlight the materiality of metal, and dealt with the painful recent history of war and anxiety over contemporary Korean society, expressing political and social rage. The emergence of the experimental art and escape from Art Informel in the late 1960s encouraged artists to search for new and different styles, and welded sculpture as an art genre gradually disappeared. Song Youngsu, Oh Jong-uk, Park Chongbae, and Park Suk-won are representative artists in this welded sculpture genre.
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Abstract art
A term which can be used to describe any non-figurative painting or sculpture. Abstract art is also called non-representational art or non-objective art, and throughout the 20th century has constituted an important current in the development of Modernist art. In Korea, Abstract art was first introduced by Kim Whanki and Yoo Youngkuk, students in Japan who had participated in the Free Artists Association and the Avant-Garde Group Exhibition during the late 1930s. These artists, however, had little influence in Korea, and abstract art flourished only after the Korean War. In the 1950s so called “Cubist images,” which separated the object into numerous overlapping shapes, were often described as Abstractionist, but only with the emergence of Informel painting in the late 1950s could the term “abstract” be strictly used to describe the creation of works that did not reference any exterior subject matter. The abstract movements of geometric abstractionism and dansaekhwa dominated the art establishment in Korea in the late-1970s. By the 1980s, however, with the rising interest in the politically focused figurative art of Minjung, abstraction was often criticized as aestheticist, elitist, and Western-centric.
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