Youngwhan Bae

Bae Young-whan’s artistic practice encompasses sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, and public projects that affect mediation in society. Born in 1969 and sometimes identified with a generation of Korean artists grappling with the legacies of Minjung art—a politically charged genre that emerged amid the pro-democracy movement in the 1980s—he is more interested in devising a poetics of lived experience than in a program of politics. Bae’s work combines a keen awareness of vernacular beauty with neo-conceptual strategies. Often making use of humble, mundane elements—discarded wood from construction sites, broken bottles, and sentimental song lyrics—his art is attuned to the ephemeral surfaces as well as the deeper structures of feeling that underlie Korean society. Academically trained in traditional Asian painting (BFA, Hongik University, Seoul), he also draws upon the conceptual tenets of that discipline to undertake a distinctly contemporary engagement with timeless questions surrounding the individual’s relationship to nature, culture, and society in the collective Korean consciousness. Bae Young-whan has held institutional exhibitions at Seoul Museum of Art (2018); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea (2016); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2013); PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2012); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2010); and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2009); among others. He has participated in various international biennials, including Gwangju Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, and Venice Biennale. He is the recipient of the Grand Prize, Korea Public Design Award (2015) and Today’s Young Artist Award (2004), both from the Ministry of Culture, Korea; and Gwangju Biennale Site Award (2002). He was a finalist for the APB Signature Art Prize (2018) and Hermès Foundation Missulsang (2007).