SeMA Green is a biannual exhibition focusing on senior generation of contemporary Korean art. Green refers to ‘evergreen’ that something remains perennially fresh, interesting and being liked, and the exhibition is for recognizing their artistic achievement as well as for illuminating forgotten history of those who have encountered and lived in modern and contemporary era of South Korea.
SeMA is pleased to invite the pioneer of Hangul typography Ahn Sang-soo and Paju Typography Institute for SeMA Green 2017. nalgae.pati, the title of this exhibition indicates a collaboration of two entity, Ahn Sang-soo and Paju Typography Institute. nalgae (wings) is the pen name of designer Ahn Sang-soo who’s also the director of Paju Typography Institute, and pati is an abbreviation for Paju Typography Institute. On nalgae section, the exhibition explores the series of letter paintings of Ahn from the early period starting from Ahn Sang-soo font to recent works including hollyula (being immersed) canvas painting seires. Most of his previous works are digitized to offer us to experience abstract sensation and visual appreciation of Hangul letters, distanced from their social meaning and conventional uses. They are rather closer to pictographic or hieroglyphic arrangement of Hangul alphabets by recomposing our perception on the conventional understanding on the language, Hangul. The original sources were created throughout Ahn’s lifetime career as a graphic designer and visual communicator who has continually seek for his own language as a creator in this specific region of South Korea. His experiment consists destructing, rearranging and restyling of Korean alphabets in varied forms including letter typing, drawing, rubbing, calligraphy, painting and performance. His love and respect upon Hangul has expanded to the core spirit of Paju Typography Institute for finding the most of our own education rooted on ‘doing design’ and ‘designing life’.
Paju Typography Institute was established in Paju Book City in 2013 as a design community and also as an education cooperative. On pati section, there is the archive of last 5 years of the school. Starting from the establishment of institute, there is the photographic and text materials of varied events including construction of yisangjib (undergraduate building), freshman orientation, welcoming ceremony and visiting Yeongneung (tomb of King Sejong, the Hangul creator) to series of curriculums and projects that every participants of PaTI has ‘designed’ and worked together for last five years. The archive is not only for offering basic information of the school, but also for sharing multi-layered philosophy of them as a whole and on-going experiment which aims at finding our own educational language. The series of workshops designed by PaTI teachers are also prepared to invite the potential community of the museum in order to experience PaTI and PaTI’s idea in depth. This is for performing the archive in the exhibition space and for expanding their pedagogical idea into social structure. Besides them, series of small programs designed by students of PaTI is also invited for revealing issues and topics of young generation which offer us at the same time to think about future designers and about designing life in different forms in contemporary society.
