From May 30 to August 15, 2017, the Seoul Museum of Art(SeMA) will present
the exhibition Highlights, featuring works from the Collection of the Fondation
Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. As the first exhibition of the Collection
of the Fondation Cartier in its 2017 Asian tour, it provides the Korean audience
with an opportunity to discover world-renowned works from this Collection. As
the title indicates, Highlights not only refers to the most representative artworks
from the Collection of the Fondation Cartier that will be on display, but also
implies our wish to share the heightened, shining value of art, which represents
various crucial subjects that we need to pay attention to through visual and verbal
languages.
For the exhibition Highlights, SeMA and the Fondation Cartier selected
100 representative works among 1,500 artworks in the Collection of the
Fondation Cartier, including the works of Sarah Sze, Ron Mueck, and Moebius.
Based on common interests beyond national and gender differences, these works
are significant for their multidisciplinary approaches to diverse social phenomena,
which we expect to be easily shared with the Korean audience. The exhibition
Highlights offers the opportunity to discover a series of works subliming diverse
subjects into artworks. The work Hear Them Speak by French artists Raymond
Depardon and Claudine Nougaret recorded languages and dialects in danger of
extinction, representing the subject in the form of a beautiful film. Diller Scofidio
+ Renfro’s EXIT installation is a 360° visualization of human migrations and causes
based on an idea by French philosopher and urbanist Paul Virilio. A series of
drawings by David Lynch reveals another aspect of the film director as a visual
artist.
With this exhibition, SeMA and the Fondation Cartier also wish to build a long-
term partnership, grounded in the potential of contemporary Asian art. The first
Korean artist to having hold a solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in 2007,
Lee Bul will reveal her work Heaven and Earth to the Korean audience.
This exhibition will also actively introduce extraordinary commissions by
emerging artists, who have not had opportunities in mainstream art scenes.
For this particular show, the Fondation Cartier fully supported the artists’ duo
PARKing CHANce formed by the film director Park Chan-wook and artist Park
Chan-kyong, so that the brothers could create a new project entitled Decades
Apart. The Fondation Cartier also commissioned the webtoon work The Flat is
Political from artist Sunwoo Hoon, which is one of the most popular and advanced
genres of contemporary art in Korea.
SeMA hopes this exhibition will remain a pioneering and successful example
for institutional collaboration.
