2. Namhee Kwon
Born 1971 in Korea, Currently lives and works in Paris
Education
2002 Goldsmiths College, University of London (MA)
1997 HongIk University, Seoul, Korea (MFA)
1994 Gangneung National University, Korea (BFA)
Solo Exhibitions
2012 Art Monthly, Space Noon, Suwon, Korea
Namhee Kwon, Gallery Su, Songpa Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Namhee Kwon, KDB Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2011 Transparent Process, Untitled Gallery, Manchester Asia Triennal, Manchester, UK
Transparent Process, Tenderpixel Gallery, London, UK
2009 Numbered Paintings, Twain Tippetts Gallery, Utah State University, Utah, USA
2007 Foggy Area, KunstDoc Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2005 The thought that Counts, The Pit Foyer, Barbican Center, London, UK
Hospitalworks, Bugerhospital, Stuttgart, Germany
Hospitalworks, Mayday University Hospital, London, UK
1997 JongNo Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Selected Group Exhibitions
2015 P.R.N. No form and all substance, La Galerie, Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
2014 Manual_Parts and Labour, Culture factory Osan, Osan Museum of Art, Osan, Korea
Trait d’union, Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
Bridge to the Future, Taehwa River International Eco Art Festival, Ulsan, Korea
Spring of Buyoungwha, Gangneung Museum of Art, Gangneung, Korea
A.I.D. video show, HalProject presents, Space Mass, Seoul
2013 The Collective Diary, HalProject, Space Mass, Seoul
2012 Nature Human being and Sound, Earth Thinking, Geumgang Nature Art Biennale, Gongju, Korea
Myths the Imaginative Spaces, Tamna International Art Camp, JeJu, Korea
Doors Art Fair, CSY Gallery, Seoul
2011 Closer to Contemporary Art: Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art 2010 New Collections, Gyeonggi Museum
of Modern Art, Ansan, Korea
Summer Drawing Festival, KunstDoc Gallery, Seoul
Pink Art Fair, EHY Enterprise, Seoul
Creative and environment, Gallery 15
th
, Seoul
2010 Works in the Open Air, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, Korea
Close Encounter, Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju, Korea
Myths of the city and Fantasies of Nature, Doors Art Fair Special Exhibition, Seoul
2009 Yangpyeong Eco Art Festival 2009 Echo of Eco, Yangpyeong, Korea
Boarding Bridges,Global Overseas Adopters Link Art Festival, Kring, Seoul
Breathing Out, Taehwa River Eco Art Festival, Ulsan, Korea
So close yet so far away, Main exhibition, International Incheon Women Artist’s Biennale, Korea
3. A Brief Message, Two people exhibition, Gallery Noon, Seoul
Ceramic Passion, International performance show, World Ceramic Biennale Korea, Icheon, Korea
2008 Post Citizen - Finding our way, Asian Contemporary Art Exhibition, Changwon Asian Art Festival,
Changwon, Korea
KCAF Korean Contemporary Art Festival, Seoul Art Center Hangaram Museum , Seoul
2007 FEAST, Gallery KunstDoc, Seoul
INSAF 2007 Insa Art Festival, Special exhibition: Public art, Seoul
Kangnung National University 2007 Faculty Exhibition, Gangnung, Korea
Finding from Neverland to Everland, Hongje stream public art project, Seoul
Tongui-dong Miscellany, KunstDoc Gallery, International Artist’s Studio, Seoul
2006 Our neighborhood, Tongui-dong public art project, KunstDoc Gallery, Seoul
2005 12 in a triangle, Chelsea Space, London
The Riddle of Style: The Young Korean Overseas Artists Exhibition, Seoul Art Center Hangaram Museum,
Seoul
Chelsea Horror Hotel, Chelsea College, London
2004 TIPP, Barcsay Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
Awards/ Grants
2014 The Korean cultural and arts promotion fund for International Artist residency, Arts Council Korea, Seoul
2011 The Korean cultural and arts promotion fund, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture / Arts Council Korea,
Seoul
2009 The Korean cultural and arts promotion fund, Arts Council Korea, Seoul
2008 Insa Art Space archive artist, Arts Council Korea, Seoul
2004 Theatre-rites Artist’s Bursary, Arts Council England, London
Artist residency Program
2014 – 2015 Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
2013 – 2014 Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
2006 – 2007 KunstDoc International Artist’s Studio, Seoul
2005 Theatre-rites, London
2004 TIPP International Course in Contemporary Art, Hungary/ England
Symposium/ Visiting Lecture
2009 Visiting Artist, Fine Art Department, Utah State University, Utah, USA
2009 Women Artists in the ‘Post-Feminism’ Era, Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale International Symposium,
Incheon, Korea
2007 KunstDoc International Artist Studio Symposium, Seoul
2007 – 2008 Part-time lecturer, Gangnung National University, Korea
2000 – 2001 Part-time lecturer, Gangnung National University, Korea
Theatre Performance and Set Design
2005 The thoughts that Counts, The Pit, Barbican Center, London, UK
2005 Unfolding Andersen, The British Library, London, UK
2005 Hospitalworks, Mayday University Hospital, London, UK
4. Publications
2012 Beyond Contemporary Art, Etan Ilfeld, Vivays Publishing Ltd, London, UK
2012 Inter-Text, Untitled Gallery, Manchester, UK
Public Collections
2011 Tenderpixel Gallery, London, UK
2010 Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, Korea
2009 Gyeonggido Yangpyeonggun, Korea
Contacts
Email: namheekwon@hotmail.com
(KR)Tel: +82 (0) 17 373 7397
19-1 Tonguidong Jongnogu Seoul, South Korea, 110-040
(FR) Tel: +33 (0) 6 71 02 82 10
Cite Internationale des Arts, 18 rue de l’Hotel de Ville, 75004 Paris, France
5. Namhee Kwon 1
1. Meet me at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, 2010
Permanent Installation on the roof of the Museum, 15m x 240cm x 200cm, Mixed Media, LEDlight
A site-specific installation for the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art. The curator of the Museum asked me to do
a sign for the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, which the audience could see even far away from the museum.
6. Namhee Kwon 2
2. Measurements, white neon, dimensions variable, 2010
I measured the actual size of the architecture. 0m, 4.5m, 9m, 13.5m, 18m.
7. Namhee Kwon 3
3. Meet me at the train station , blue neon, 200 x 10 x 10 cm, 2007
This installation: Meet me at the train station was in fact site-specific art project for an old hotel, which was going
to be destroyed soon after exhibition. The hotel is a place to stopover after departing from the station, connecting
the future premise that the traveler may return to the station to continue the journey. The message from the sign
implies an invitation to a continuing journey. I intended audiences to draw a personal drawing or picture of their
journey in their mind and to complete it on their own in imagination with the sentence. The work is about
perception. This work is invited for the International Incheon Woman Artist’s Biennale 2009 in Korea and Global
Overseas Adopters Link Art Festival.
8. Namhee Kwon 4
4. Exhibition view, 2008
From left <Foggy Area> 2007, <I am safe> 2001, <Numbered Paintings>2007
Foggy Area, 2007
Digital Print, 130cm x 40cm
I am safe, 2001
Mixed Media, 110cm x 75cm
Numbered Paintings, 2007
Mixed Media on Canvas, 97cm x 113 cm each
9. Namhee Kwon 5
5. Are you dreaming or are you speaking? photograph, dimensions variable, 2004
Untitled dimensions variable, 2003
10. Namhee Kwon 6
6. Empty Winds, Empty Sky, Empty Words, and Empty Waters. 2007 (A part of the work)
Mixed Media, 100m x 60cm x 50cm
A site-specific art project for a river in the city : Seoul.
When I did this public art project, this area was very gloomy and depressed part of the Seoul. I wished to change
the atmosphere of the area and installed the one hundred meters of huge scaled imaginative sign. One year after
when I visited the place again someone planted plants there, the atmosphere of the place has totally changed.
Then when I visited two years after some local primary school was having drawing exhibitions above my works. It
was real happy moment and experience as an artist.
11. Namhee Kwon 7
7.Quiet World 2009, Yangpyong, mixed media , D 60cm, 2009
<Quiet World> is an ongoing art project since 2002. I intended to question that the value of silence, stillness, and
emptiness, also the meaning of the solitude in busy contemporary society through the work: Quiet World. It has
been exhibited in many cities of the world as a public exhibition in a real site. Certainly the current world is too
noisy and full of things. ‘Silence’ and ‘Nothingness’ is one of the themes which I have been strongly pursuit.
Quiet World 2006, Seoul, mixed media , D 90cm, 2006
12. Namhee Kwon 8
8. Quiet World Sweets, sweets, 6 x 23 x 1 cm each, 2009
The significance of the work lies in the fact that the people get to take and eat the symbolic ‘sign’ of silence
through the medium of sweets. Each sweet is a contemporary art work and the audiences were confused to keep
it or to eat it. I made 20,000pieces of Quiet world Sweets and gave them away. The project was invited for the
International performance show in the world Ceramic Biennale Korea and they supported and funded the project.
13. Namhee Kwon 9
9. Transparent Process, Digital Image, 2010
Exhibition view, Jeju Museum of Art, 2010
14. Namhee Kwon 10
10. - 3 -, Neon, 2011
This is the page numbers. The white wall can be an empty one page with the full of stories, or a space can be a
page. The page continues.
- 1 -, Neon, 2011
- 2 -, Neon, 2011
15. Namhee Kwon 11
11. A writers Diary, Ink on Paper, 295 sheets, 2014 (unexhibited)
I started to write down a diary of a writer with a pen and ink on a white paper from the start to the end of the
writer’s life. I started to live the writer’s everyday life in repeat in the same way of the writer wrote her or his own
diary. It has reached over 295pages. It took 8monthes to complete. The first diary was by Virginia Woolf who
always had been given similarities of the perception with my life to me. I am trying to make a book and exhibition
with the manuscripts, and if it is possible I have a plan to try to publish it in a publishing company to complete the
project.
16. Namhee Kwon
Current Practice:
I am interested in representing literary poetic impressions of everyday life into the visual language, and try to
evoke spectator’s mind as if they are dreaming using texts, signs, symbols in a medium such as everyday objects,
sculpture, photographs, paintings, installations etc. I can say that I am on the line of 1960
th
and 70
th
of conceptual
artists, who does minimalism or the Surrealists of the 1930th. I exhibit in a gallery space as well as in a real site.
At the moment it expands into performance and public event as well. <Quiet World> is one of the representative
ongoing projects I have been doing since 2002.
Light works have been my main interests recently. By using such as neon and LED lights to describe the internal
sense of the writings, books, advertisement, or signs. I have been created light works since 2007 such as <Meet
me at the train station>, <Measurements>, <Meet me at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art>, and <-1-> etc.
Transparent Process installation of white neon numbers in Tenderpixel Gallery in London and Untitled Gallery in
Manchester in UK transformed the space into an oversize book, with each wall reminiscent of a blank page. Neon
connotes the public dimension, via signage and advertisements, its statements emboldened through the
medium’s theatricality. The installation subverts the conventional, commercial role of neon as a medium for
outdoor advertising; in contrast, the works are placed inside the gallery space to create an installation that mimics
a book devoid of content, stripped to its essence of blank pages and numbers. The works <-1->, <-2->, and <-3->
occupied each wall in order to distort the scale and placement of each number; as such, the visual perception of
the space is transformed. The <Measurements>extends this idea into the outside of the architecture and the real
world too. I would like to examine this idea with lights more inside of the architecture as well as outside of the
architecture, among other projects which I would like to proceed.
