SMALL MUSEUM OF ART
2019, Wall, photo, artwork on loan, text, folding screen, single-channel video(15min. 50sec.), dimensions variable. Video Courtesy of MMCA.
Installation view, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul, 2019
Small Museum of Art consists of 22 pieces of pictures, one oil painting, and a corridor with folding screens. The artist detached the images from their original contexts and rearranged them, while attempting to write a “pseudo art history.” He constructs a composite narrative by employing diverse textual and structural apparatuses, such as the references and memos that he has written on the walls, the height of the walls and the shape of the windows. Small Museum of Art functions as a guide that aids in the audiences’ recognition of the artist’s intention to construct the exhibition Gathering as a part or extension of a subjective art history.
Small Museum of Art includes a film about the construction processes of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul (hereinafter MMCA Seoul). During the construction, 4 laborers died from a fire. The film captures the performance of gut, a traditional ritual that took place to console the spirits of the dead and to implore for safety. The site of the MMCA Seoul was used as the Office of Royal Genealogy during the Joseon dynasty, a hospital in the Japanese colonial era and the information agency during the military dictatorial regimes. In light of the building site’s transformations, the MMCA Seoul is a place apt for exploring the meanings of museum as it relates to both the political and art history of Korea.
"Teenage students, dressed in traditional Korean costumes with their hair braided, look upon paintings framed and displayed on the walls, as if they were in a 19th-century European salon. On observation of this scene, the Japanese art historian Yanagi Muneyoshi stated that institutional museums display the Joseon people’s everyday objects as if they were works of art, respectfully calling them “folk art.” As such, while the colonized people admire the imperial culture, the intellectuals of the imperial countries chant for the culture of the colonized nations. Now, the dynamics between different nations and cultures have become even more complicated."
