Your Seoul Exhibition Guide

We get it: you’d rather maroon yourself on a desert island before attending one more round of Zoom drinks. And you’d be seriously grateful for the sand between your toes. But the harsh reality is that our future is one where nature and technology will be increasingly hard to separate. For Anicka Yi, this is a call to art. Her time spent in the Brazilian rainforest and along the Californian coast inspires her “techno-sensual” work, in which the purity of mother nature is corrupted, disfigured, transformed, and exalted by methods both high and low. One piece includes flowers fried in tempura, another features anemone-like shapes formed in foam and resin. For Yi, human anxiety and natural beauty can, must, and always will coexist.

Exhibition Site

Imagine stepping into the hard drive of a video-based artist who has been working for over 30 years. Now throw in some Tron aesthetics and you have yourself the immersive experience that makes up Hito Steyerl’s exhibition at MMCA. Featuring 23 of her works, the show takes you through her journey understanding our increasingly digital world. At first, this is the kind of show that may leave you a bit puzzled. But give it a chance and you’ll start to see the relevance of her art. Politics, technology, and social media all emerge as themes while she takes a critical look at how images are produced and shared today. Speaking of sharing, give us a shout on Instagram with your pictures from the show! 

Exhibition Site

With metaverse the hottest dinner table topic these days, Ian Cheng’s exhibition will prepare you with more talking points. Five of his animated works are on view. A mix of endearing creatures and cute sounds fill up the futuristic worlds of Cheng’s imagination. While artificial intelligence and game engines aren’t common sights in an art museum, their use in his work remind you that we’re already living in a virtual world. Cheng describes one piece as “a video game that plays itself.” Other pieces follow the story of BOB, an artificial lifeform that dances and morphs on screen. Although not quite a retrospective, this show is an immersive crash course on all things Ian Cheng.

Exhibition Site

We love paintings that feel alive. You might not expect it with Loie Hollowell’s most minimal paintings to date, but their colors pulsate as if they’re breathing. These are from the newest Brain series in her on-going exploration of the body. Ovals that glow in deep reds and sun-like oranges create a meditative experience, almost like you’re looking at a real-time picture of your mind in a trance. Her soft pastel works on the lower floor are always our favorite though. Same imagery on a much smaller scale. But you get a taste of her artistic process: pencil marks scrawled into the margins, notes on what to adjust for when she turns these studies into the featured paintings.

Exhibition Site