SEOUL.- The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea and Kim Chung-up Architecture Museum jointly present Kim Chung-up Dialogue, an exhibition spotlighting Kim Chung-up, the master of Korean modern architecture, from Thursday, August 30 through Sunday, December 16 at MMCA Gwacheon.
Kim Chung-up Dialogue is a special exhibition commemorating the 30th anniversary of the architect’s death. This exhibition foregoes presenting a retrospective of Kim’s life and works to highlighting hidden aspects of the architect who not only introduced modern architecture to Korea but played a significant role in the history of Korean architecture, culture, and art. Over 3,000 works and materials from the MMCA archive and the Kim Chung-up Architecture Museum collections aree on display along with photo and video works specially produced for this exhibition to offer a full perspective on the architect.
Kim Chung-up was born in 1922. He graduated Yokohama Technical High School and took on an assistant professorship at Seoul National University College of Engineering in 1948. With the outbreak of the Korean War, he relocated to Busan and actively interacted with other artists until an opportunity rose through the 1952 International Conference of Artists in Venice and he set off to Paris to work at Le Corbusier’s atelier from October of 1952 to December 1955. Upon his return to Korea, Kim founded Kim Chung-up Architecture Research Institute in Seoul and began designing original architecture that married modernism and Korean traditional elements, such as the main building of Pusan National University and the French Embassy in Korea.
The Samil Building, completed just before Kim’s deportation to Paris for publishing a criticism of the government over the Gwangju Grand Housing Complex incident in 1971, was the tallest building in Seoul at the time, symbolic of the city’s stature, later becoming known as one of Kim’s representative works. Kim Chung-up returned to Korea from France in 1978 when the Korean society was going through rapid changes, and around this time, his works began showing aspects of futurism. Unfortunately, most of his later-year designs that aimed for utopian idealism failed to materialize, leaving the World Peace Gate commemorative of the 1988 Olympics as his final work.
The first portion of Kim Chung-up Dialogue begins with a timeline of Kim Chun-up’s works in reverse chronological order and extends into four themes entitled “Globalism and Localism,” “Artistic Thinking and Practice,” “City and Desire,” and “Memory and Regeneration,” examining the specific contexts that surrounded the artist and his works at the time. The exhibition observes Kim Chung-up’s later works that have yet to be sufficiently discussed and examines the process of collaborative works with Kim Whanki, Lee Jungseob, Youn Myeung-ro, Lee Seung-taek, and Baek Geumnam. Also offering a glimpse into the architect’s thoughts on an ideal city, this exhibition is expected to open up discussions for the nascent studies on Korean architects, creating dialogues about architecture, art, and the various social networks existing in the Korean society.
Along with works from the Kim Chung-up Architecture Museum collection and the MMCA archive, new exhibition-specific works by three artist teams, including architectural photographs by Kim Taedong and Gim Ikhyun and video work by 57Studio, are on display to reinterpret Kim’s architecture in light of the contemporary social and cultural atmosphere.
To further expand the theme of this exhibition, besides Kim Chung-up’s only anthology published in his lifetime, The Lights and Shadows of an Architect, a separate companion book will be published by Youlhwadang Publishers in October. A joint symposium will be held with the Korean Association for Architectural History on Saturday, November 3, and field trips visiting Kim Chung-up’s major architectural works as well as curator talks are programmed throughout the exhibition period.
Bartomeu Marí, director of MMCA, notes “This exhibition exhaustive of Kim Chungup’s course of work will serve as an opportunity to evoke awareness on the problems in modern and contemporary Korean architectural heritage restoration and to reflect on the uniforming urban landscapes.
