Sung Neungkyung, Location, 1976, Gelatin silver print on paper, magazine, 47.2×26.2×(9), MMCA
Performance Art
* Source: Multilingual Glossary of Korean Art. Korea Arts Management Service
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Experimental art
A genre of Korean art characterized by non-two-dimensional work such as sculpture, environmental installation and performance that emerged in the late 1960s and continued over the course of the 1970s. Art historian Kim Mikyung has analyzed the movement in the context of the political and social phenomena of the time and first coined the term experimental art to describe such work.
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Performance
Performance is a genre within which artists use their voice, body, and objects to express their artistic vision through live action. It became popularized after World War II as an experimental genre through the work of John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Performance can be related to other movements of the period such as action painting, body art, happening, process art, Fluxus, and conceptual art. It is characterized by audience participation, improvisation, spontaneity, and provocativeness. The first work of performance in Korea is widely considered to be The Happening with Plastic Umbrellas and Candle Lights performed by Kang Kukjin, Chung Chanseung, Kim Youngja, Jung Kangja, Shim Sunhee, and Kim Inwhan during the Union Exhibition of Korean Young Artists held at the Korean Information Service Gallery in December 1967.
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Chung Chanseung
Chung Chanseung (1942-1994) was a painter, performance artist, and installation artist. He was a pioneering figure who led experimental art in Korea in the 1960s and 1970s. He graduated from the Western Painting Department at Hongik University in 1965. After graduation, he was active in the artist collective Non Col, which he founded while still in college along with Kang Kukjin, Kim Inwhan, Nam Yeonghui, Yang Cheolmo, Choi Taeshin, and Han Youngsup. He also presented abstract paintings in the style of Art Informel. In 1967, he formed the Sinjeon Group, a group pursuing anti-art practices, together with Kang Kukjin, Jung Kangja, and others, and with members of Origin Society and Zero Group, he organized the Union Exhibition of Korean Young Artists. In 1968, Chung staged the happenings Transparent Balloon and Nude and Murder at the Han Riverside with Kang Kukjin and Jung Kangja. In 1969, he appeared in the experimental film The Meaning of 1/24 Second directed by Kim Kulim. In June 1970, he formed Korea’s first total art collective The Fourth Group with Kim Kulim, Bang Taesu, Son Ilgwang, and others. They presented the street happenings Street Theatre and Funeral of the Established Culture and Art. As these happenings by The Fourth Group were deemed decadent by government authorities, Chung focused on printmaking and three-dimensional works in and after the 1970s. After participating in the 1980 Paris Biennale, he moved to the U.S. a year later in 1981. Until his illness forced him to return to South Korea in 1994, Chung lived in the Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York and was immersed in making his distinctive junk art creations that connected metal scraps and discarded objects in a variety of manners.
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Event-Logical
Lee Kun-Yong, who was a member of the avant-garde art collective Space and Time Group (ST) in the 1970s, coined the term “event-logical,” to describe the key characteristic of his performance art which he referred to as an event. It is also the name of the event exhibition held on July 3, 1976 at the Seoul Press Center. After presenting an event for the first time at the ’75 Today’s Method Exhibition held at Baekrok Gallery in Seoul on April 19, 1975, Lee Kun-Yong presented another event at the Space Grand Prize Exhibition held at the National Museum of Modern Art (now MMCA) on August 27 of the same year, calling it a “logical event.” Lee later renamed it “event-logical” and used it as a term to refer to his performance artworks. “Event-logical” was defined by Lee as a pure act that exists within the art system and serves an artistic purpose in itself and as a logical artistic act that questions the meaning of the events comprising the world. Meanwhile, the exhibition Event-Logical featured the ST artists, Kim Yongmin, Lee Kun-Yong, and Sung Neungkyung. At the time, Lee presented Five Steps, The Logic of Hands, and The Logic of Place; Sung presented For 15 Seconds, Contraction and Expansion, and Reading the Newspaper, and Kim presented Marking and Erasing, Two Stones, and Mop. The photos of the artists’ events on the existing brochure of this exhibition were taken beforehand.
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