Secret beyond the door

The title of this exhibition, ‘Secret beyond the door’, comes from Fritz Lang’s movie of the same title which was filmed in 1948. Lang took the story from a fairy tale, Bluebeard's First Wife, in which the lord of the manor killed his wife every time one of his wives opened the door of a prohibited room. Fritz Lang recreated the original tale into a Freudian version slightly tinged with noir.
Rather than making a direct reference to the meaning of Lang’s movie, this exhibition uses its hidden components. Those include not only a mysterious impression felt from the title, but also the overall bizarre fascination created from its background, its structure, the characters’ ambiguous personality, and the disjointed sequences among the scenes. These details of the movie serve to create the atmosphere of this exhibition.    

'Secret beyond the door’ is an exhibition presenting the ‘attitude’ and ‘method’ taken by Korean contemporary artists in their efforts to cope with the changes in Korean society in its relationship with international art scene. The fifteen artists on view are; Beom Kim, Sora Kim, Gimhongsok, NAKION, Sungsik Moon, Kiwon Park, Park Sejin, Yiso Bahc, Young-Whan Bae, Nakhee Sung, Hein-kuhn Oh, Jewyo Rhii, Yeondoo Jung, Choi Jeong-Hwa and Ham Jin. The specific attitude and method selected by these artists demonstrate trends of transformation in Korean contemporary art and cultural meaning newly achieved in the process. This exhibition observes Korean contemporary art from the local and global context and, taking a step further, attempts to imagine another dimension of ‘the beyond’. Instead of focusing on the oeuvres of a specific artist, this exhibition aims to take a broader look of the very scenes and context of Korean contemporary art, from the perspective of its social-cultural changes.

Among the fifteen invited artists, Yiso Bahc and Choi Jeong-Hwa are main figures in defining this exhibition’s conceptual frame. In this frame, this exhibition develops itself to include those artists who accompanied the two artists in the changes and younger artists who have created their own voices amid diverse conflicting stances toward the two seniors. This exhibition provides a whole view of various scenes, involving interrelations of artists and art worlds.