Korean Eye

It only took a few weeks to learn not to ask a local, “How far?” The eyes grow wide with worry as they insist you should take a bus up four blocks or scoff at your five hour trip for a weekend in the mountains. So we knew we’d find the Foundation Cultural Center a spit’s distance from subway station exit, a walk marked five minutes.

It was so close it seemed the same building. On the lobby level to the library of Korean culture we found the exhibit. Korean Eye, now in its second year, aims to showcase the country’s young contemporary masters. Forget pottery, calligraphy, and landscapes of mountain ranges. The young blood makes pop infused comment art, just like their global siblings.

The first images to grab at the entrance are Dong Yoo Kim’s pixel paintings that crop two celebrity faces into a conversation. Hundreds of debutant Dianas make the icon of one pretty-in-pink Queen Elizabeth. Next to that a grid of Liz Taylors look out as a mass James Dean portrait.

Jeon Joon Ho’s video-display of oversized currency winks quiet construction sites. A painter covers the White House with their roller, a copter flies in a Welcome sign, but both only if you look closely.

Kim Hyunsoo’s small statue of a lost boy draped in a fur and breaking off his antler is one of the show’s best, all full of innocence and undercut with dark wonder. We knee down on the gallery floor and crank our necks under his fur covering, checking for anatomy.

As we see the pre pubescent penis cloaked under the artwork, I think: strip away everything else, and we still have that in common.