Final yr might have been the yr that Asia started to reopen as pandemic period border restrictions expired, however 2023 was when the area’s artwork scene right here appeared to return totally to life. The Art SG fair in Singapore lastly debuted in January, and Artwork Basel Hong Kong roared back in March with its first quarantine-free version since 2019—2019! Folks have been on the transfer once more, at a speedy tempo.
As a journalist based mostly in Seoul, a lot of my year-end high ten, which follows beneath, comes from South Korea, however I’m grateful to have lastly been capable of bounce across the area a good quantity this yr with ease.
The perfect artwork I noticed was on a go to to Kyoto this summer time, when, coincidentally, the millennium-old Gion Matsuri festival was going down with full pageantry, after scaled-back variations throughout the pandemic. Towering floats—fantasias of ornate structure, some adorned with luxurious tapestries—crawled by way of the streets, pulled by relentless groups of volunteers. It was charming. Nevertheless, as an annual occasion, that superb affair shouldn’t be eligible for this checklist, which is reserved solely for short-term exhibitions that have been on view in 2023.
Earlier than revealing my high ten, I’ve to notice a couple of outstanding reveals that didn’t make the checklist: feminist artist’s Yun Suk Nam’s charming portraits of ladies who fought for Korean independence (plus greater than 1,000 painted sculptures of canine) on the Daegu Artwork Museum in South Korea; the important “Solely the Younger: Experimental Artwork in Korea, 1960s–1970s” on the Nationwide Museum of Trendy and Up to date Artwork (MMCA), Seoul (and at the Guggenheim for a couple more weeks!); a revelatory survey of painter Guei-Hong Gained (1923–1980), a chronicler of postwar each day life in Seoul, on the Sungkok Museum in Seoul; the wonderful Yooyun Yang’s presentation of her newest cinematic, mysterious work at Main Follow; Wang Tuo’s time-bending video treatises on Chinese language historical past and censorship at Blindspot in Hong Kong; Rirkrit Tiravanija’s piquantly odd umbrella-repair shop and robots at David Zwirner in Hong Kong; the MMCA’s richly rewarding retrospective for the beloved painter Chang Ucchin (1917–1990) at its Deoksugung department in Seoul; and Do Ho Suh’s invigorating, interactive set up on the Seoul Museum of Artwork’s Buk-Seoul location, which invited kids to take brightly coloured clay and maintain including, and including, and including to it.
With out additional ado, my high ten:
-
Elements of the 2022 Singapore Biennial
Picture Credit score: Andrew Russeth Titled “Natasha,” for causes that stay unclear, the 2022 Singapore Biennial (it bumped into March 2023, so let’s rely it) felt scattershot and willfully obscure at factors, however its organizers—June Yap, Nida Ghouse, Ala Younis, and Binna Choialso—additionally delivered some strokes of genius.
There was a mini survey of the veteran Korean bricoleur-painter Joo Jae-Hwan, an array of beguiling digital work that Samia Halaby composed within the 1980s on a Commodore Amiga 1000, and a room-filling set up by Daniel Lie of turmeric-dyed materials, soil, chrysanthemums and extra that smelled fertile, deathly, just a little evil: artists taking dangers, refusing conventions.
-
Haegue Yang at Kukje Gallery, Seoul
Picture Credit score: Courtesy Kukje Gallery, Seoul and Busan Early this yr, I attempted to go to the house in close by Incheon the place Haegue Yang offered her storied 2006 present “Sadong 30,” Sadly, it’s now a wreck. However this outing in a renovated hanok learn like one thing of a religious sequel, plumbing the furtive energies that may inhabit properties. (Its becoming title: “Latent Dwelling.”) Electrical candles and daylight supplied dim illumination, and the natural perfume of Chinese language drugs lingered. A bevy of Yang logos have been available, like paper cuttings and bulbous sculptures adorned with bells or faux straw, showing much more anthropomorphic than regular on this intimate setting.
-
Santiago Bose at Silverlens, Manila
Picture Credit score: Courtesy Silverlens, Manila and New York The Filipino artist Santiago Bose, who died in 2002, at 53, was so expansively ingenious that when you ignored the wall labels on this career-spanning present—“Spirited Traces,” curated by Patrick Flores, a Nationwide Gallery Singapore deputy director—you might need thought that you simply have been wanting on the efforts of a small coterie of venturesome artists who have been obsessive about collage, alert to politics, and wanting to experiment. There have been humble reliquary-like items, a vivid streetscape set in Baguio, composed of greater than two dozen images, and an uncommon little portray that’s caught with me, Pupil with Molotov Cocktail (1971).
-
‘DMZ Exhibition: Checkpoint’ in Paju, South Korea
Picture Credit score: Andrew Russeth/ARTnews The so-called Civilian Management Zone across the DMZ is unhappy, lonely, and unusual—so charged that, after I heard a gaggle present was coming there, I used to be skeptical that it might work. However Sunjung Kim, of the reliably wonderful Artwork Sonje Middle, delivered a nuanced exhibition, haunted by historical past. Suh Yongsun’s work of militarized landscapes and politicians hung within the gymnasium of an deserted U.S. base, whereas at an observatory overlooking North Korea, the collective ikkibawiKrrr supplied a mural with the outlines of crops that exist within the sealed-off zone. The temper was mournful, with shimmering hints of clear-eyed hope.
-
Eun Nim Ro on the Gana Artwork Middle, Seoul
Picture Credit score: Courtesy Gana Artwork Middle, Seoul The rough-hewn animals that Eun Nim Ro (1946–2022) painted are so intensely lifelike that you simply anticipate them to begin strolling, slithering, or flying down from the photographs that they name dwelling. If that occurred, you’d wish to spend time with them, however figuring out what they’re precisely could be one other matter solely. They’re charismatic however elusive, vaguely legendary. Their eyes gaze deep into you. Titled “Meine Flügel sind meine Final” (“My Wings Are My Burden”), this memorial present for Ro—a nurse-turned-artist who was based mostly in Germany—whet the urge for food for a grand retrospective: a wild menagerie.
-
Seok Ho Kang on the Seoul Museum of Artwork
Picture Credit score: Courtesy Tina Kim Gallery, New York Earlier than his 2021 demise, at 50, the gimlet-eyed painter Seok Ho Kang had greater than a dozen solo reveals in South Korea and one exterior of it. Allow us to hope extra worldwide exhibitions come quickly (New York’s Tina Kim simply did one) as a result of, as this taut survey underscored, he was razor-sharp about of-the-moment points, like how photos flow into, and id is constructed. His greatest are close-ups of clothed our bodies—a crotch in blue denims, a chest draped in pearls. Like the photographs of Domenico Gnoli and Nolan Simon, Kang’s photos are deadpan and a contact fetishistic, each visually and intellectually voluptuous.
-
The 14th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea
Picture Credit score: Andrew Russeth/ARTnews This can be a time of biennial saturation, of biennial exhaustion. How do you make a present that truly issues? Sook-Kyung Lee, the director of the Whitworth museum in Manchester, England, had a bevy of convincing solutions at her Gwangju Biennale. Tapping 79 artists, “Gentle Water Exhausting Stone” was steeped in artwork historical past however attuned to the up to date, crowd-pleasing however nonetheless, at instances, robust. It was judiciously curated, addressing reminiscence and neighborhood, with standout works from the Korean dwelling legend Lee Seung-Taek, the wily kinetic sculptor Yuko Mohri, and Arthur Jafa, whose elegiac video tribute to Greg Tate stole the present.
-
Kim Whanki on the Hoam Museum of Artwork, Yongin, South Korea
Picture Credit score: Courtesy the Hoam Museum of Artwork This feast of a present at Samsung’s superbly renovated Hoam museum, “A Dot, a Sky,” supplied an exhilarating take a look at the too-short profession of certainly one of South Korea’s—one of many 20th century’s—best painters, Kim Whanki (1913–1974). His early figurative works are concise, tender, and lucid, a world of twilit landscapes and quiet interiors that maintain radiant moon jars and fresh-cut flowers. And as soon as he hit on abstraction within the 1960s, he was unstoppable: His late “Universe” work are bewitching, swirling worlds of pure colour (blues, most famously), constructed from tight, rhythmic marks. Each museum ought to have one.
-
‘Fable Makers—Spectrosynthesis III’ at Tai Kwun Up to date, Hong Kong
Picture Credit score: Andrew Russeth/ARTnews That is what it’s all about. Why turn into a curator when you can not write histories, or highlight obscured ones? Inti Guerrero and Chantal Wong put collectively a treasure trove of queer artwork made by greater than 60 figures in Asia and its diaspora from roughly the 1950s to the current. Sharing house have been giants like Danh Vo and Martin Wong, very good youthful figures like Jes Fan and the duo Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho, and a few historic names that have been new to me, just like the astonishing Mayalan painter Patrick Ng Kah Onn (1932–1989). This was a present that ought to encourage a thousand extra.
-
Kim Beom on the Leeum Museum of Artwork, Seoul
Picture Credit score: Andrew Russeth/ARTnews Kim Beom is without doubt one of the only a few artists I can consider who has made work that’s legitimately laugh-out-loud humorous. His masterpiece is Yellow Scream (2012), a video with a Bob Ross–like determine (an actor) demonstrating the right way to embed feelings into abstractions, screaming in myriad methods as he paints. The Seoul-born Beom, 60, has additionally made wry, scrappy, ingenious, poignant work (a brick wall of stitched canvas items, for one), sculptures, and extra, all current on this profitable retrospective. Like good jokes, they upend energy dynamics (political, creative, institutional, and in any other case) with effectivity. Take a look.
