Thursday, September 21, 2017

KIAF 2017 ART SEOUL

16th edition of the KIAF 2017 ART SEOUL was held at the COEX Hall A & B in Seoul, Korea September 20. The show is until September 24 (Sun). 167 galleries from 13 countries are participated this year.


I had visited the Kiaf a few times in the past. But this time, I was impressive at how much international the KIAF is. When I started to walk around the fair. They provide us two packing wine and small cheese and olive for VIP. VIP package was so cute. I went around the show a few times to see overall to detail.

I could see many art works which has Asian flavor:

#JonghwaLee #MikyoungKim #SunchelKim #JeongminSuh

Some of Older Korean Artists works: #KimSou #MyungsikKim #SuFanOh

New Artists works with fun multimedia ; #DaunJeong (Fabrics acrylic on Canvas)
#YongRaeKwon (Stainless Steel on Canvas) #LaurenMartin #Hwancho

At the fair, there is a gallery, which got my attention, the East gallery from Taipei.  Most of  galleries present modern or contemporary art works, but the East Gallery shows more traditional style painting by Chien Bih Wang.  I had a good conversation with the art director, Eric Koehn.  He said the artist was a feminist and the concept of painting was not traditional like the style of painting.  More surprisingly, His booth was popular among the VIP females.  Many people stop by looked at the painting or took a photo in front of paintings...  To me, the style of painting wasn't definitely my favorite, but it was an oil painting, but somehow it looks like Chinese watercolor painting which was interesting.

Attended two conversations;  Gyungseong Dadaist in 1920's (me with #YoshikawaNagi, photo above left) and Post-War Abstract Art in Asia (#MatsutaniTakesada, #HoKan and #ParkSuhBo, photo by clockwise )

Gyungseong Dadaist in 1920's; Based on the book the Dada in Tokyo, The Dada in Gyungseong (Seoul's older name) by Japanese Literary critic, Yoshikawa Nagi.  She said 1920's dada was created by Young artists who lived in dramatic time period with their passion and youthful mind.

Post-War Abstract Art in Asia; three major contemporary Artists: Park, Seobo (Korea), Ho Kan (Taiwan), and Matsutani Takesada (Japan) talked about their life with their art works.  It was very nice to hear how they have lived after the war in three different countries as an artist.

I really like Park, Seobo's phrase, "In the future, Artist should create artworks which can heal people's mind living in fast growing stressful society".