What is ‘neo-sculpture’, or the sculpture after sculpture, today when sculpture, objet d'art, installation, and performance share 3-dimensional form? This is the question facing young sculptors today. Korea’s young sculptors explore and search for new category and form of contemporary sculpture. They create abstract sculpture using industrial materials such as epoxy, latex, and Styrofoam, and extract monumental shapes from ready-made goods like refrigerators and air conditioners, exploring both the production structure of objects and the materiality of sculpture. Their works reveal a tendency of post-modern ‘recycling of avant-garde art’ such as playful transformation and refreshing application of things. There are also continued attempts to define ‘what makes a sculpture’. They use appropriation of the history of modernist sculpture to remake it into contemporary shape and form or move between the boundaries of flat surface and sculpture, and space and sculpture, expanding the conditions for existence of sculpture. There is also a strong tendency of expressing sculpture as a proxy of humans. A sculpture of enraged body glaring fiercely is a sign of the existence of minorities excluded from society. A sculptural tendency that emphasizes the ‘decorative feature’ as sweet, lovely, lighter, and more fluid objet is another new interest of young artists.

  

GWANGJU, South Korea ? One warm February morning, the curator Defne Ayas bounded up a steep, sylvan path toward a cemetery in this city of 1.5 million as she discussed shamanic practices, resistance movements and other aspects of the area’s history that are themes in the art exhibition she was finalizing nearby.

  

Asia has probably produced some of the biggest artists of incredible talents when it comes to contemporary art. Cai Guo-Qiang, Pacita Abad, Tiffany Chung and Ai Weiwei are some of the famous names who have used this art form ? which emerged in the late 20th century ? to bring focus to the issues of our times ranging from personal matters such as isolation to socio-political causes such as migration.

  

South Korea’s cultural leaders are worried about the fate of the multibillion-dollar art collection amassed by the late head of the Samsung empire. The heirs to the fortune are considering selling off prized artworks to pay a mountainous inheritance tax, rather than keeping the collection in the country as many had expected. Now, Korean arts organizations are all calling on the state to step in.

  

“I am a big believer in the importance of the context in which art is produced,” Defne Ayas says. A recognized curator working across contemporary art, politics, and performance, Ayas is known for, among other achievements, curating the Turkish pavilion in the 56th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, co-curating the 11th Baltic Triennial, and serving as curator-at-large of the renowned New York-based performance art festival PERFORMA. “I studied political science and studio art, not art history. I’ve always been more interested in what's backstage: the dynamics that feed into art rather than the finished pieces themselves. I think that’s why I’ve always been so intrigued by dance and performance. You don’t just see an object, but thinking coming to life right before your eyes.”

  

Among the art exhibitions worth a visit before they wrap-up this month are two solo shows of female abstract artists at galleries on Samcheong-dong art street in central Seoul. Minjung Kim’s monochrome works of delicate gradations, which are reminiscent of East Asian philosophical ink paintings called muninhwa (scholars’ painting), could lead viewers into a meditation. On the other hand, Shin Min Joo’s paintings of strong colors and gestural traces, on the tradition of Abstract Expressionism, could vitalize audiences, in line with the show’s title ? “Vigor.”