Bae Young-whan, once described as a ‘people’s artist’ for his use of quotidian materials including dried petals, pills, cotton balls and bottle caps, has died.
Born in 1969 and originally grouped with a generation of Korean artists grappling with the legacies of Minjung, the political art that emerged amid the pro-democracy movement in the 1980s, Bae was interested in everyday lived experience over the documentation of revolution. Sentimental music lines became a way of marrying the two strands, his Pop Songs series marking out lyrics of K-pop hits from the 80s and 90s in found materials on canvas. In Youth, for example, Bae rendered the lines in pills and cotton.
Bae represented South Korea in the 51st Venice Biennale and participated in the Gwangju and Sharjah Biennales. In Italy he showed Anxiety—Seoul 5:30 P.M. (2012/2024), featuring recordings from twelve different temples in the Seoul area which harmonised with the dusk
chimes of Venetian bells
He held institutional exhibitions at Seoul Museum of Art (2018); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea (2016); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2013); PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2012); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2010); and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2009).
