Guggenheim Museum Exhibits Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s-1970s

The Guggenheim Museum located in the Upper East Side of Manhattan is renowned for its art and its architecturally significant building design. It features a spiral rotunda, a ramp spiraling upward, with art on display as it coils toward the glass ceiling. A new exhibit to see now, “Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea” from September 1 to January 7.

Its significance is in the fact that it brings exposure to an overlooked part of art history. Conversations on 20th-century Korean Art often focus on two primary movements. First is the Informel movement, referring to the avant-garde abstract paintings of the 50s and early 60s. The second movement discussed is usually Dansaekhwa, the monochrome painting movement of the 70s. The Guggenheim’s three-level display of Only the Young celebrates the lesser-known yet enormously significant period in between, called the Experimental art movement.

This ground-breaking, avant-garde movement refers to the work of a loose affiliation of young artists who came of age in the decades immediately following the Korean War. Only the Young is the first North American museum exhibition dedicated to the Korean Experimental art movement.

Although the war ended in 1953, Korea was still in conflict for decades longer. Faced with a rapidly modernizing urban environment, civil unrest and censorship under Park Chung Hee’s administration, ongoing tensions with North Korea, controversial military involvement in Vietnam, and increased globalization, artists mirrored this disorder in their work by rejecting traditions and embracing new materials and processes.

Viewers begin the experience on Level 2. This gallery, titled “A New Beginning”, showcases groups of artists formed in the 1960s, including the Union Exhibition of Young Korean Artists, Korean Avant-Garde Association (AG) and the Fourth Group. The dominant trend of Informel abstract paintings was rejected, and instead artists experimented with unconventional materials, such as plastic, barbed wires, and lightbulbs.

Viewers then make their way to Level 4’s gallery titled “The Logic of Resistance”, exhibiting work from the 1970s. This new decade brought more changes, particularly the establishment of an authoritarian regime as third-time president Park Chung Hee dissolved the National assembly and abolished presidential term limits, further intensifying the censorship on free speech and expression. A noticeable shift in this decade is the adoption of the new mediums of photography, video and performance-based works called “events”.

The final gallery, Level 5, is titled “The Global Village”. On this level, viewers find artworks that were at the foreground of the global avant-garde art world, featuring at international biennials. Stepping into the room, viewers are immediately struck with the sight of Lee Kun-Yong’s tree sculpture Corporal Term, which appeared at the eighth Paris Biennial in 1973. This level is showcasis the artists’ efforts to invite dialogue with international contemporaries.

Altogether, the Guggenheim’s display effectively spreads the message that this time period was not merely a transition between the Informel and Dansaekhwa movements. Rather, the Experimental art movement was monumental in its own right, showcasing the artists’ exploration of novel materials and processes in response to the tumultuous change in society around them.