Artist Kim Yun-chol chosen for the show
The artistic director for South Korea’s pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale has been revealed: Lee Young-chul, an art professor at Kaywon University of Art and Design. He was the inaugural director of the Nam June Paik Art Center in 2008 and served as chief curator of the Gwangju Biennale in 1996.
Artist Yunchul Kim has been chosen to feature in the exhibition, Arts Council Korea has announced. The exhibition’s title is Campanella: The Swollen Sun after the early seventeenth-century Italian philosopher and his work La città del sole (1602).
‘It is not known whether more artists will join the Korean Pavilion. It is up to the artistic director,’ a spokesperson told the Korea Herald. ‘But it is rare for a single artist to represent the pavilion.’
The organisation of South Korea’s pavilion at Venice has been a particularly fraught process. In July, the search for a curator had to be restarted after allegations of cronyism – the selection committee’s previous members resigned en masse following the anonymous complaints about conflicts of interest.
The complaint alleged that two candidates had workplace connections to a selection committee member; the association had not been disclosed.
