For my museum assignment, I decided to go to a virtual art event. The first Museum that I wanted to check out was the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea. The exhibition event was called “Artists in the Times: Korean Modern and Contemporary Art – Since the late 1970s” which contains a collection of Korean artwork from the past and present. It also included learning and understanding how did it evolve within the Korean culture of Art for the better good and the type of impact it made within the Korean culture in general.

Star with the first piece of artwork that caught my eyes which was called Untitled by Kwon Yongwoo. This art was made with translucent colors of blue and gray paint mixed with ink and gouache impregnated on the back of the paper on the Korean paper to seep through. What made this art piece so special to me was the material used to create it using Korean paper. I decided to research the paper and had no idea that the paper would look organic if that makes sense. Korean paper also known as hanji is a traditional handmade paper made from the mulberry tree ancient style. The Korean paper made the art have more depth in its artwork because of the texture of the paper itself which provided a unique look.

The second piece of art that I like that grabbed my attention was called “Panoramic View of the Eye of the Times” by MMCA. These art pieces show a Korean art style called Minjung Art. Minjung Art was a South Korean political and populist art movement made in 1980 after the Gwangju Massacre (May 18, 1980 – May 27, 1980) which was a mass protest against the South Korean military government for killing the citizen in the city of Gwangju, South Korea.
What I liked about the art pieces related to Minjung art was they don’t follow the traditional art style of Korea. The beauty of art that I always appreciate is you can always bend the rules of traditional styles and make your version of it. This would have multiple influences across the globe and turning something new and refreshing for the viewers to get the message across with your art, which these artists did to represent the debate against democracy and nationalism.

The final art piece that caught my attention was called Deoksu Palace-Seoul by I’m Sangbin.
This artwork showed a mixture of natural and artificial, the past and the present, modern and traditional art, and two different countries. What I like about this artwork is that it does a great job of blending in all of the different elements to where you don’t get confused or feel like one of the elements is dominating or feels like it’s being dominated by others. That is one of the most challenging things accomplished as an artist was knowing that there’s no telling whether you have merged them well or not.

Overall, the virtual Museum event has been a good experience to visit as well as an eye-opener for me knowing that now I can use their art pieces as inspiration for my projects.