[Gallery Walk] More Than Just Artworks Have Accumulated... Gyeonggi Museum of Art’s 20th Anniversary Exhibition “Flowing and Accumulating”

Reflecting on 20 Years Through 125 Works

Where Art and Life Meet: A Chronicle of Questions

Youngkuk Yoo's Mountain resembles a mountain, yet it never retreats toward mere landscape. Three peaks stand as bold planes of red, and the sky opens in a vivid blue. Black ground and green surfaces support the composition, and this simple structure lingers in the mind in an oddly lasting way. Though it is a painting of a landscape, it does not lean on sentiment; though it pushes toward abstraction, it is not arid. The Gyeonggi Museum of Art’s 20th Anniversary Special Exhibition, “Flowing and Accumulating,” begins with this ageless tension. Rather than explaining 20 years of time, the exhibition first reveals a single enduring sensation that has remained throughout the years.

Youngkuk Yoo, Mountain, 1997, oil on canvas, 133×133cm. Photo by Gyeonggi Museum of Art

This exhibition, running from March 26 to June 14, reflects on the past 20 years of collection and exhibition history through 125 works from the Gyeonggi Museum of Art’s holdings. However, it does not follow the conventional formula of a commemorative show. Instead, it unpacks the question, “What has the Gyeonggi Museum of Art done, and what should it do?” into five blanks: “Does art begin with ( )?”, “Do we live with ( )?”, “Do we remember with ( )?”, “Does art happen together with ( )?”, and “Do I practice with ( )?”. Rather than filling in the answers, the exhibition is closer to asking whether these works can still pose questions today. It is both a summary of 20 years and a return of those years to unfinished sentences.

For this reason, Youngkuk Yoo’s painting is fittingly placed at the beginning. It represents a chapter in Korean abstraction, and it feels like a condensed answer to the question of where art begins. Painting does not stop at resembling its subject; it moves on to structure and rhythm. The landscape becomes not a reproduction, but an arrangement of tension.

Boonchang Koo, In the Beginning #13, 1998, gelatin silver print on paper with stitching, 135×95cm. Photo by Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art

The first section, featuring works such as Hyunki Park’s Untitled, Osang Kwon’s Augusta, and Bonchang Koo’s In the Beginning #13, points in the same direction. Art does not always begin with a clear answer. It is born again in the gaps of form, in hands that question convention, and in attempts to translate the unseen into other senses. This is also why, while recounting 20 years of history, the exhibition foregrounds a sense of form rather than a timeline.

From Form to Life, From Life to Practice

In the second and third sections, the questions broaden toward life and memory. Works like Jeonggi Min’s People, Euntae Park’s Green Module, Younghwan Bae’s Very Luxurious and Miserable Insomnia, and Yangah Ham’s Undefined Panorama 2.0 explore how the act of living is situated on uneven layers of sensation.

Yobaek Kang’s Hwangpa 1, Seoknam Yoon’s Pink Room, The US Military and Father by Donghwan Cho and Haejun Cho, and Kyuchul Ahn’s Reading for Our Children demonstrate that the act of recalling memories is not a simple retrospection, but a reweaving of the present viewpoint. The museum’s collection is not a past in storage, but an arrangement that speaks anew. Quietly but clearly, the museum’s role is to recall what has been forgotten and to bring marginalized voices to the fore.

Eon-Yong Lee, Same Area, 1975, Performer, Variable Space, Variable Time. Photo by Gyeonggi Museum of Art

Ultimately, the center of gravity of the exhibition shifts toward Junghyun Kim. If the fourth section reads art as a matter of relationship and connection through artists like Eonyong Lee, Jeongeyeop Jung, Hyewon Kwon, and Ahyoung Kim, then the final section, “Do I practice with ( )?”, addresses the social function of art more directly. In 2024, the Gyeonggi Museum of Art received a donation of 54 works by Junghyun Kim, which now anchor exhibitions such as “Only in My Memory” and “Portrait of a Nation.” Here, the commemorative character of the exhibition becomes even more pronounced.

What this exhibition seeks to convey is not merely the quantity collected. Rather, it is closer to the questions of what values have guided the preservation of these works, how art can reach into the realms of life and society, and whether the museum has maintained those questions to the end.

A good commemorative exhibition does not foreground numbers. Instead, numbers recede into the background, and the texture of time comes forward. That is exactly what “Flowing and Accumulating” holds onto. What has flowed is 20 years of time, and what has accumulated is more than just artworks. The sensations of experimenting with form, the gaze that endures everyday life, the will to recall the forgotten, and the attitude of testing new ways of living together through art—all these become the layers of this exhibition.

This is also why Youngkuk Yoo’s red mountain is a fitting opening scene. Sometimes, a single ageless form can speak for the time of an entire museum. The exhibition runs until June 14.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.