The opening weekend of the London 2012 Olympic Games turned out not to be as busy as everyone expected – maybe Boris Johnson bumbling away on every station platform to get Londoners to get ahead of the games did the trick after all – so fitting in a trip to the latest Saatchi Gallery exhibition, Korean Eye 2012, got pencilled in to the marathon weekend at the last minute (along with getting to see Britain’s first Tour De France winner, Bradley Wiggins, lead out the Olympic road race). Both of which were amazing.
Spread out perfectly throughout the Saatchi Gallery, Korean Eye 2012 is a stunning series of installations that showcases contemporary art from Korea. Ranging from print work to paint and sculpture, the exhibition is breathtaking, creating a real sence of expectation and surprise as you round every corner of the gallery.
The exhibition is filled with stand out pieces that includes Hyung Koo Kang’s Theresa (2011) painted breathtakingly in oil on aluminium; Lee Gilwoo’s spot prints; Lee Kwang-Ho’s freakishly eye warping Cactus paintings; Ahn Doojin’s Fault lines and Hong Sung Chul’s Strings collection; Lee Jaihyo’s massive wood installation, and the other worldly mystique of You Myung Gyun’s The Floating World.
The wealth of artistic brilliance on display at the Korean Eye 2012 exhibition also represents the first time that the Saatchi Gallery has helped to curate a body of work of this magnitude outside of its own sizeable collection. The 33 artists that have been brought together for the exhibition were chosen out of an initial 28,000 pieces of work that were submitted for inclusion.
The Korean Eye 2012 exhibition opened at the Saatchi Gallery on the 26th July 2012 and is set to run through until the 23rd September 2012. If you time right and go on a Saturday morning, you’ll be able to combine it with a trip to the only weekend market I’ve ever been to that serves prosecco, just down Kings Rd in South Kendington.
