A talk event Connect: Art Sonje Center 1995 – 2016 is organized to talk about the Art Sonje Center’s past in association with the launch of the book Connect: Art Sonje Center 1995 – 2016.

Korean contemporary art began to contact international art scenes and communicate with them around 1998 when the Art Sonje Center was inaugurated. Since then the artists’ media have become extremely varied, the formal experiments in exhibitions were invigorated and the ranges of issues dealt through works and exhibitions were significantly broadened. Bringing together all the exhibitions at the Art Sonje Center from Ssack opened at the site of the current Art Sonje Center building in May, 1995 to a collection exhibition held in August, 2016, Connect 1: Still Acts, with the artists, Sora Kim, Lee Bul, and Chung Seoyoung, the book reflects the Art Sonje Center’s activities and exhibitions for last 20 years.

The talk event will be moderated by Park Hwalsung, the chief editor of Workroom press who is the co-editor of the book and chaired by Sunjung Kim, the previous director of Art Sonje Center and currently the president of Gwangju Biennale, Woo Jung-Ah, an art historian, as well as an artist Gimhongsok who has had solo exhibitions and participated in several group exhibitions that Art Sonje Center organized. In the event,
initiated from selected words from 66 key-words constituting the book’s table of contents, they will talk about their convivial experiences during the last 20 years with the Art Sonje Center and discuss its significance of the history.

Panel
Sunjung Kim (President of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation)
Sunjung Kim is the president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation and a curator. Kim was the chief curator and deputy director at the Art Sonje Center in Seoul (1993 – 2004), as well as the director of samuso (2005 –). As the commissioner of the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale, Kim curated Secret Beyond the Door (2005), and also worked as the artistic director of Platform Seoul (2006 – 2010). Kim has also been the artistic director of the Real DMZ Project, which researches political, social, and cultural issues surrounding the Korean DMZ (2012 –). Kim has served as chief director of Trust, Media City Seoul (2010), artistic co-director of Round Table, at the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), artistic director of ACC Archive & Research at Institute of Asian Cultural Development in Gwangju (2014 – 2015) and director of Art Sonje Center (2016 – 2017).

Gimhongsok (Professor of Sangmyung University, Department of Stage Art Design)
Gimhongsok was born in Seoul, Korea in 1964. He lives and works in Seoul, Korea. He has had solo
exhibitions such as Ordinary Strangers (Art Sonje Center, 2011), Antarctica (Art Sonje Center, 2004), Xijing Is Not Xijing, Therefore Xijing Is Xijing (Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, 2016). He has participated in group exhibitions such as Venice Biennales (2003, 2005), Gwangju Biennale (2002, 2006, 2012), All about Laughter (Mori Art Museum 2007), 10th Anniversary Exhibition – All You Need Is LOVE: From Chagall to Kusama to Hatsune Miku (Mori Art Museum, 2013), Theater of the World(Guggenheim Museum, 2017).

Woo Jung-Ah (Professor of POSTECH, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences)
Woo earned her BA and MA from Seoul National University’s Department of Archeology and Art History and then successfully defended her art history Ph.D.thesis, which focused on conceptual art from the 1960’s, at UCLA. She is the author of The Chosun libo newspaper’s “Woo Jung-Ah’s Art Story” column series and is a regular contributor of exhibition reviews to Artforum International. At present, she is writing a book onvarious contemporary art media channels that represent collective tragedies like wars and disasters as well as traumatic events such as loss.

Moderator: Park Hwalsung (Chief editor, Workroom Press)
He studied Archaeology & Art History at Seoul National University, ans worked at Ahn Graphics. After working as a chief editor at Design db, D+ and Semicolon by Minumsa, he is currently a co-representative of Workroom press. He also translated books including Design and Art (co-translated) and Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography.

『Connect: Art Sonje Center 1995-2016』

● KR / EN
● Book size: 128mm x 185mm
● Price: 40,000 KRW

● Texts: Anselm Franke, Doryun Chong, Eungie Joo, Haeju Kim, Hiroki Azuma, Hugh J. Silverman,
Hyunjin Kim, Hyun-Suk Seo, Jinsang Yoo, Jong Soung Kimm, Jung-Ah Woo, Kyung yong LIM,
Mami Kataoka, Miwon Kwon, Seo Dongjin, SooJin Lee, Sumi Kang, Sung Won Kim, Sungyeol Kim,
Sunjung Kim, Young-june Lee, Yunah Choi
● Editors: Najung Kim, Park Hwalsung
● Design: Workroom
● Published by: Art Sonje Center