Media art explores Korea-Japan relationship

Arts & Design

Published: 08 Feb. 2011, 20:37

Media art explores Korea-Japan relationship

“Make-up,” left, by Japanese artist Daito Manabe and “With or Without You” by Mioon, a team of two Korean artists, are part of the show “K-J Collaboration Project,” which will be projected onto the facade of the Seoul Square building, opposite Seoul Station, through the end of March. Provided by Gana Art

Those who pass by Seoul Station in the evening are probably familiar with the moving light displays on the facade of the Seoul Square building across the street.

But from now until the end of March, the building will feature large-scale media works by Korean and Japanese artists that deal with the relationship between the two countries.

Gana Art, the nation’s leading art gallery and operator of Seoul Square media facade, said it launched the exhibition titled “2011 K-J Collaboration Project” yesterday.

The show has four pieces of media art that deal with cultural similarities and differences between Korean and Japanese culture and how people in the two countries see each other.

They were made by three Korean and two Japanese artists. They set the theme of the exhibition together and exchanged ideas before making the display, Gana Art said in a statement.

Among them, Japanese artist and programmer Daito Manabe made the media-art piece “Make-up,” which is about the conventionalized facial expressions of masks - or of actors in heavy makeup in Korean and Japanese traditional theaters.

“Those expressions symbolize the characters’ social statuses, personalities and many other things,” the artist wrote in a note for the exhibition. “In addition, such conventional expressions sometimes appear on the faces of the two countries’ people in our time.”

Mioon, a team of two Korean artists, is showing a media art work titled “With or Without You” based on typical group photos such as graduation pictures in Korea and Japan, which show some similarities.

“Both Koreans and Japanese seem to attach greater important to belonging to a group than people of other cultures,” Miooon wrote in a note for the show. “Our work is about individuals who continually seek various groups that they feel they should belong to through their lives.”

The other artists participating in the show are Masayuki Akamatsu and Yang Min-ha.

The media art pieces will be shown between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays through the end of March.

By Moon So-young [symoon@joongang.co.kr]