MOSCOW-SEOUL:Common Intelligence
Museum of Moscow, Moscow, Russia, 2021
Moscow — Seoul: Common Ideas Exhibition Opens at the Museum of Moscow
Dates: August 13 – November 7, 2021
Press View: August 12, 17:00
Opening: August 12, 19:00
Venue: Museum of Moscow, Zubovsky boulevard, 2
Curators: Kristina Romanova, Nail Farkhatdinov
Tickets available on the website
Participants: AES+F, crocodilePOWER, Recycle Group, Anka Akhalaia, Gyungsu An, Daniil Antropov, Aleksey Dubinsky, Kibeom Kwon, Jae Yong Kim, Taisia Korotkova, Maksim Ksuta, Alex Kuznetsov, Jeongwoong Lee, Jung Yeon Min, Vladimir Martirosov, Pavel Otdelnov, Kwang Young Chun, Lee Jinju, Yun Kyung Jeong, Xooang Choi, U-Ram Choe, Kyunchul Shin
The Museum of Moscow together with Triumph Gallery, the Moscow City Tourism Committee, the official tourist information portal of Moscow Discovermoscow.com, and RUSSPASS digital travel service are pleased to announce Moscow–Seoul: Common Ideas, a group exhibition showcasing the works of Russian and South Korean contemporary artists, whose creative paths are closely connected with the two capitals. The project will mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and the Republic of Korea and twinning relations between Moscow and Seoul.
Moscow–Seoul: Common Ideas examines works by Russian and Korean artists exhibited in pairs. Within the museum space, representatives of the two art scenes enter dialogues on topics close to them: the relationship between global and local, personal and national identities, space and memory, traditions and modernity. Artists of each pair are united by being in the shared semantic field of contemporary culture and life. At the same time, there are clear technical and genre differences between their works. The result of a close spatial and semantic comparison of works are new connections between them, new optics for the perception of each work and art scene. Interestingly, this optics of correlations turns out to be complimentary for the Moscow art scene—it successfully withstands comparison with the Seoul art scene, traditionally recognized as among the brightest in the world.
Amidst the growing interest towards the national and local in art, the vernacular of contemporary culture remains undivided. In addition, there is a common problem space that challenges artists throughout world. Metropolitan areas continue to retain their positions and functions as “hubs” that allow artists to develop, expand audiences, and achieve domestic and international recognition. At the same time, Moscow and Seoul, being the capitals of states with deeply rooted traditions, not only have the necessary infrastructure, but are also a kind of “places of power”. Living there, or temporarily returning there, “charges” the artists—this is especially true for those that have relocated. Years spent in Seoul or Moscow inevitably influence the works of artists of different generations and career stages. The show, subtitled Common Ideas, aims to explore this influence and identify cross-cultural parallels in the issues, ideas, and techniques embraced by artists in Russia and South Korea.
The forthcoming exhibition at the Museum of Moscow offers a preliminary conclusion of a long-term project in which Triumph Gallery, in collaboration with other institutions, presented exhibitions of Korean contemporary art to the Moscow audience. Then, most of the Korean artists were shown in Russia for the first time, and for some those exhibitions became their museum debuts—an important milestone for a conservative, highly hierarchical society. Korean contemporary art is close and clear to the Moscow audience. It is commercially successful as well—almost all the exhibits are part of prominent private collections of contemporary art in the city. Thus, the MOSCOW-SEOUL: Common Ideas exhibition creates an interesting precedent by offering a look at Korean art, the very concentration of Korean culture, that has made its way into collections of a foreign, albeit sometimes similar, country.
The exhibition is co-organized by the Museum of Moscow, Triumph Gallery, the Moscow City Tourism Committee, the official Moscow travel portal Discover Moscow and the RUSSPASS digital travel service. The project was created in partnership with Askeri Gallery and with support of the Cultural Center of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the Russian Federation.
Media contact: media@mosmuseum.ru
The Museum of Moscow was founded in 1896. The museum is located in the Provision Warehouses, an architectural monument of federal significance. The stock collection numbers about 800 thousand items, including a rich collection of archaeological artifacts. The Museum of Moscow also includes several branches: the Museum of Moscow Archeology, the Lefortovo Museum of History and the Gilyarovsky Center. www.mosmuseum.ru
Triumph Gallery was founded by Yemelyan Zakharov and Dmitry Khankin. During its existence, the gallery has gone from a private commercial structure to an influential international institution with its own production base. The gallery collaborates with leading Russian artists and pays special attention to supporting young art (the Great Hopes and Fathers and Sons projects at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall; the Young Lions project at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art). The gallery also organizes educational projects, has a regular publishing program and produces interdisciplinary exhibitions through its non-profit Research Arts division. www.triumph.gallery
The Moscow City Tourism Committee creates an attractive tourist image of the capital, constantly analyzing global trends and offering tourists exciting new opportunities for interesting and meaningful leisure. This is embodied through legislative initiatives, congress and exhibition activities, event and image projects.
Discover Moscow is the official tourist information portal about the capital, launched by the Moscow City Tourism Committee and ANO «Project Office for the Development of Tourism and Hospitality of Moscow». It is the project’s mission to tell travelers and residents of the city about its culture, sights, events, public spaces, infrastructure, gastronomy, and citizens themselves. https://discovermoscow.com/
RUSSPASS digital travel service helps to plan a trip to Russia quickly and easily—one only needs to select a region and travel dates. The service allows one to create a customized route or choose one of the many sample itineraries. RUSSPASS was developed upon the initiative of the Moscow Government. The project is overseen by the Moscow City Tourism Committee and the Moscow Department of Information Technologies. https://russpass.ru