The Observatory

전망대

11 May - 27 May 2023

Frieze No’9 Cork Street, London

IM Heung-soon Solo Exhibition 《The Observatory》 at Frieze No’9 Cork Street, London

The Page Gallery presents ‘The Observatory’, a solo exhibition of Korean artist and film director IM Heung-soon at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street, Frieze's permanent London exhibition space. Featuring new film and video installations, this presentation is informed by the artist’s focus on the Korean Peninsula’s current situation after the division between North and South.

Early in the artist’s career, IM Heung-soon worked with the ‘Seongnam Project’ (1998-1999), an artist group dealing with the problem of unequal distribution of capital in Seongnam City in Korea. He was also part of the ‘Mixrice’ (2002-2004), a group exploring the concept of migration in contemporary society in various ways, including collaboration with migrant workers. In a similar vein, and with an acute awareness of the problems surrounding the Korean division, the artist speaks about issues located on the margins of social, political, and capitalist ideology. As such, his work foregrounds minority groups such as North Korean defectors, victims of a massacre by the state, and female workers.

The exhibition will be a rare chance to experience IM Heung-soon’s distinctive language of moving images in which he finds the possibility of confronting unresolved pain through history, and the lives of those who cannot even be mourned, through interview scenes and images sketching nature.