If you fear basements, you will be extremely limited at the Seoul branch of the MMCA as most of it is built underground. However Gallery 1 is on the ground floor and right now they’re showing a special exhibition of the donated works of Suh Se Ok.
Suh Se Ok’s works with ink and hanji. I love the brush strokes, but I’m not too fond of extreme repetition. Many of this works give me a feeling of chained fences or plant cells.
Look at the titles and you’ll find they are abstractions of people. People dancing, twisting, holding hands, people doing many things. The repetition becomes a realisation that while we find ourselves the centers of our own world, there are hundreds, thousands, millions, billions more people out there with the same energy and capacity. This can be exhilarating or depressing depending on how you look at it.
Wether you find the multitude of similar others oppressive due to how unspecial you are or you in the grander scheme or you find the hope in the potential for all these special people to build something great, I’d recommend checking these out.
This exhibit of Suh Se Ok will be up through March 6th at the Seoul MMCA. Be sure to come, and if you aren’t afraid of basements, there is a lot more fascinating work below.
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
30 Samcheong-ro, Sogyeok-dong,
Jongno-gu, Seoul 03062
+ 02 3701 9500
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