Yoon Hwan Bae: At the Old Ball Game

About

Bae, a selected participant of DOOSAN Art LAB 2015, a DOOSAN Art Center program that supports young artists under 40 in exploring new ideas, has used drawings and videos to bring his stories to life. This exhibition will showcase new works produced at DOOSAN Residency New York, alongside two single-channel films: Road to Studio B (2018), created early this year, and Self-Portrait (2017), previously shown at his solo exhibition, Habitat, at DOOSAN Gallery Seoul, March 2017. 

Bae’s practice originates from an incessant narrative impulse. His daily thoughts and contemplations get transformed into his drawings and literary expressions. These vignettes become films and paintings, created with acrylic, oil paint, and oil pastel. This exhibition showcases his works, following the stream-of-consciousness method, inspired by internal and external clashes with society. Bae explores the private space of an artist’s studio as an unreachable model situated between imagination and reality, and this utopian path Bae desires to walk as an artist is best portrayed through the footprints left by the protagonist in Road to Studio B, a video that can be seen immediately upon walking into the gallery.

The title of the exhibition, At the Old Ball Game, originates from a line in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” the seventh-inning stretch song during a Major League Baseball game. Bae states that like those of a sports game, several rules exist within the studio as well. Repetitive actions in the studio create a pattern and a regime, where harmony and conflict co-exist. For Bae, At the Old Ball Game reminds him of these long-established rules, allowing him to appreciate the routine principles he has repeatedly followed in the studio. Through this exhibition, Bae continues to investigate the issues he faces in the studio: the labor of the artist, and the resulting forms of expression, as well as behavior and discipline within the studio.

Yoon Hwan BAE (b. 1983) received his B.F.A. from Seowon University and M.F.A. from Kyungwon University. He has held solo exhibitions at Gallery Baton (2017, Seoul, Korea), DOOSAN Gallery Seoul (2017, Seoul, Korea), Space O'NewWall (2015, Seoul, Korea), Spacemom Museum of Art (2014, Cheongju, Korea), and Insa Art Space (2014, Seoul, Korea). He has also participated in group exhibitions at venues that include Seoul Museum of Art (2018, Seoul, Korea), Chapter II (2017, Seoul, Korea), Cheongju Museum of Art (2017, Cheongju, Korea), Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum (2016, Suzhou, China), Seoul Olympic Museum of Art (2016, Seoul, Korea), Gyeongnam Art Museum (2016, Changwon, Korea), Art Center White Block (2016, Paju, Korea), Daegu Art Museum (2015, Daegu, Korea), DOOSAN Gallery Seoul (2015, Seoul, Korea), Gallery175 (2015, Seoul, Korea), OCI Museum (2014, Seoul, Korea), space k (2013, Seoul, Korea), and Ilmin Museum of Art (2009, Seoul, Korea).

Presented as part of the 13th edition of Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) Sept. 5th - Nov. 2nd, 2018.

LIST