Swiss contemporary artist Ugo Rondinone is the subject of the solo exhibition burn to shine at Fosun Foundation in Shanghai, China. The exhibition derives its title from the poetry collection You've Got to Burn to Shine (1994) by American poet John Giorno, the artist’s departed partner. Bringing together a selection of Rondinone's recent works spanning video, painting, and sculpture, the exhibition delves into the artist’s contemplation on the cycles of life and death, as well as nature that deeply involves such existential experiences. 

Occupying the entire second floor, the video work BURN TO SHINE (2022) shows a group of percussionists and dancers performing as they wait for sunrise over an uncharted desert. Here, the arrangement of six large screens forming a circle, paired with energetically urgent drumbeats, creates an immersive experience for the viewers, positioning them as integral to both nature and the performance. This thematic motif of time and nature’s flow extends to the third floor, where his watercolor series mattituck lies. Depicting the sunset at his home on Long Island, New York, 14 paintings are spaced equally across the walls, intuitively conveying the eternity of the constant repetition of sunset and moonrise. 
The exhibition also presents the horizons, a series of horse sculptures that suggest “a landscape confined inside the body” through a horizontal structure created by two different shades of blue glass, and nuns and monks, a collection of large bronze sculptures placed on the rooftop against a panoramic backdrop of the city. 

In burn to shine, Rondinone continues to explore the coexistence and interdependence between the natural world, Romanticism, and existentialism, recording the essence and elemental features of nature. The exhibition remains on view through January 1, 2024. 

The Berlin-based artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset are the subject of a major solo exhibition, Bonne Chance, at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France. Marking their first solo exhibition in a French institution, Bonne Chance introduces a selection of the duo’s installations that replicate common urban settings and scenarios across the museum’s Grand Nef, Forum, and rooftop gallery.

Collaborating since 1995, Elmgreen & Dragset are known for their work that reimagines traditional exhibition spaces, transforming them into settings that resemble other institutional environments. Through their witty and critical interpretations of social and everyday stereotypes, these transformations allude to the underlying systems within everyday spaces and invite visitors to reevaluate aspects of contemporary society from new perspectives.

Within the exhibition, the duo redefines the exhibition format by conceiving temporary architectures and life-sized models of public and private spatial settings, reminiscent of those seen in everyday life. Notably, The One & the Many recreates an apartment structure commonly seen in Berlin. Other familiar settings, such as a theater auditorium, public restroom, laboratory, conference room, morgue, CCTV surveillance room, and desolate office landscape, are presented within labyrinthine structures throughout the museum.

The life-like silicone figures engaging in various activities intensify the discomfort and artificiality evoked by the duo's urban environment. As visitors meander through and encounter these nameless figures, they are invited to engage more actively with the exhibition, piecing together different clues and making conjectures about what might have happened or what is about to unfold at each spot. However, the various structures and staged scenarios that viewers navigate, akin to playing a game, follow an incoherent logic where normal rules no longer apply. Through this deliberate paradox, Elmgreen & Dragset highlight the absurd systems of contemporary society where defeat and exclusion prevail. 

Adding a touch of irony through its title, Bonne Chance renders the large-scale structures utterly powerless, demonstrating that one’s win is not a result of chance but potentially of choice. The exhibition remains on view until April 1, 2024.

The internationally acclaimed German artist Candida Höfer has been selected as the recipient of the Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024. Established in 1960 by the Berlin Academy of Arts, the Käthe Kollwitz Prize is awarded on an annual basis to a visual artist with a former connection to Berlin. Previous winners of the prize include Peter Weibel (2004), Hito Steyerl (2019), and Nan Goldin (2022).

Höfer’s works, often defined as “portraits of spaces,” meticulously capture the unique attributes of each space, including its architectural structure, social function, cultural purpose, and ambience. Commending Höfer’s contributions to contemporary photography over the past five decades, the jury remarked that the artist “imbues these spaces with a profound, almost spiritual quality through her precise framing and details, further emphasized by the absence of people.”

Widely presented around the world through innumerable exhibitions, Höfer has participated in documenta11 (2002) in Kassel, Germany, co-represented Germany at the national pavilion of the 50th edition of La Biennale di Venezia (2003) in Italy, and received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography by the Sony World Photography Awards in 2018. Her works can also be found in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, and Museo Guggenheim Bilbao.

The award ceremony will take place on September 13, 2024, at the Berlin Academy of Arts, accompanied by a solo exhibition showcasing Höfer’s works at the same venue in celebration of the occasion.

Lee Ufan is the subject of an eponymous solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof, Germany. Spanning Lee’s artistic practice for over five decades, this comprehensive retrospective presents approximately 50 works, including paintings, sculptures, and installations, by the prominent figure of Japan’s Mono-ha and Korea’s Dansaekhwa movements.

Lee Ufan played a crucial role in establishing and developing the Mono-ha school, an avant-garde art movement that originated in Japan in the late 1960s. As a key pioneer of the movement, Lee has examined the inherent characteristics of materials and their relationships, focusing on the encounter between the self and the other as well as the “encounter with the world as it is.” At the core of his practice is the exploration of the spatial and physical relationship between what he creates and does not, as well as between what he paints and what he chooses to leave unpainted.

The exhibition introduces a diverse array of Lee's work, including the reenactments of his early works, such as Fourth Structure B (1968) and Landscape I (1968), alongside works from his representative painting series, From Point (1973–1979) and From Line (1972–1983). Also featured is his iconic Relatum series, exploring the fluid relationship between natural materials like stone and earth and industrial materials like steel and canvas. Notably, the large-scale installation Relatum – The Mirror Road (2016/2023) is juxtaposed with Rembrandt's masterpiece, Self-Portrait with Velvet Beret (1634), from the collection of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

Regarding Rembrandt's work, Lee has remarked, “[…] they hold a wondrous glow, not from outside but from within. […] So when I stand before Rembrandt's self-portraits, the very core of my soul trembles.” Constantly reflecting Lee's artistic philosophy throughout, the exhibition examines and challenges the binary distinctions between East and West, nature and artificiality. Lee Ufan continues until April 28, 2024.

Contemporary artist Yeondoo Jung, whose practice centers on media art including photography and video, is the subject of the solo exhibition MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2023: Jung Yeondoo – One Hundred Years of Travels at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea. As the 10th artist selected for the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, an annual program inaugurated in 2014 to broaden the horizons of Korean contemporary art, Jung presents a selection of five works spanning video, installation, and sound, including four new pieces. Throughout his career, Jung has been focusing on the macro-narratives embedded in the stories of ordinary people and historical accounts, emphasizing the multifaceted existence and diverse voices therein. In this exhibition, the artist delves into historical and cultural liminalities, explores connections beyond temporal and spatial boundaries, and addresses the theme of ‘relocation and foreignness.’ 

The exhibition’s title, ‘One Hundred Years of Travels,’ signifies the historical narrative of the Korean diaspora to Mexico in the early 20th century. The thematic exploration traces back to the analogical alignment between the century-old story of Koreans uprooting to Mexico and the mythical journey associated with the prickly pear cactus, a plant that traversed from Mexico and took root in Jeju Island. The correlation between the 'transplantation' of the cactus across the Pacific and the 'migration' of Koreans expands their ongoing narrative beyond conventional diasporic paradigms, into other stories and lives. 

At the core of the exhibition lies the extensive four-channel video installation One Hundred Years of Travels (2023). This installation features videos of Korean pansori, Japanese gidayu-bunraku, and Mexican mariachi performances directed by the artist, derived from texts related to the relocation, and presented across three screens. Facilitated by numerous visits to Mexico, interviews with second-to-fifth-generation descendants of Korean immigrants, and recordings of the diverse tropical flora found at Yucatán state’s henequen farms, the artist employed methodological approaches grounded in relationships and performativity. 

Additional works in the exhibition include Generational Portraits, a paired presentation of two-channel video portraits of the descendants of Korean immigrants currently living in Mexico, and Wall of Blades, a 12-meter wall installation that conveys the significance of diaspora and politics of imperialism through machetes crafted from sugar. The artist’s adept utilization of multimedia, transcending photography and video, text and sound, and performance and installation, serves as a visual device that materializes diverse circumstances and the context of hybridity hidden under the ostensibly fixed narrative of diasporic history.

Jung’s solo exhibition, which captures the encounter of two disparate worlds and thereby encourages greater connections with the unknown in contemporary times, remains on view through February 25, 2024. 

Artist Park Chan-kyong is the subject of the solo exhibition Park Chan-kyong: Gathering, on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C., USA. Marking the inaugural exhibition in the National Museum of Asian Art’s modern and contemporary galleries, the exhibition opens as the museum celebrates its centennial year. The show is the artist's first solo exhibition at a major American museum.

The Seoul-based artist has garnered international recognition for his use of photography and film to examine the complex history of modern Korea. The works in this exhibition are a testament to his ongoing artistic endeavors. Citizen's Forest (2016) is a panoramic 3-channel video work that draws on the poetry of Kim Su-yeong (1921–68), Korean Minjung painting, and folk culture to reflect on major tragedies in South Korea’s modern history. In this poetic video filled with metaphors and allusions, Park expresses condolences to the nameless souls who perished during the tragic events of Korean history, including the Donghak Peasant Revolution (1894), Korean War (1950–53), Gwangju Democratic Uprising (1980), and the Sewol ferry disaster (2014).

Also on view is another significant work titled Belated Bosal (2019). The video work revolves around the themes of Buddha's Nirvana and the catastrophic radioactive leak in Fukushima. The majority of the images in the video are shot in black-and-white negative, reminiscent of autoradiography, a technique used to visualize radiation exposure. Based on a specific Buddhist narrative, the film reflects Park's ideas on challenging conventional situations, depicting a silent form of hospitality and a time when traditional narratives cease to be effective.

The exhibition presents a total of five works that closely trace the enduring traces of tradition, history, and disaster in contemporary society. Among them is Child Soldier (2017), a series of still and moving image portraits reimagining the presence of a lonely North Korean soldier. Also featured is Fukushima: Autoradiography (2019), illustrating the consequences of ecological disasters through negative images and natural landscapes. Park Chan-kyong: Gathering continues until October 13, 2024.

Suki Seokyeong Kang, known for her contemporary reinterpretations of Korean tradition within socio-cultural contexts, is the subject of the solo exhibition Suki Seokyeong Kang: Willow Drum Oriole at Leeum Museum of Art, Korea. Featuring a diverse array of works, including two-dimensional pieces, sculptures, and a video, Suki Seokyeong Kang: Willow Drum Oriole unfurls a landscape that integrates each unique individual with the ever-changing nature, collectively weaving a narrative of togetherness and evoking the relationship between individuals and society.

The exhibition presents approximately 130 works, ranging from Kang’s earlier series to new works. Among them is the Jeong series, which draws its inspiration from the traditional Korean musical notation system known as Jeongganbo. This system, originally used to record the pitch and duration of musical notes, has been reimagined as abstract conceptual structures that propose a certain operational mode of time and narrative. Also featured are works from the Mat series, drawing inspiration from hwamunseok, a mat used to demarcate the dance floor area of the Chunaeng-mu, a one-person court dance from the Joseon Dynasty.

The exhibition includes Kang's more recent Hours series, created by stretching, dyeing, and knotting silk around a circular frame to evoke the cycles of time, a central theme in Kang's work. Also screened in the lobby of the museum is a video work titled Willow Drum Oriole, featuring images of Kang’s works that emerge from a long rectangle of black screen, providing viewers with a multi-sensory experience.

In December, Zoe Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery, and June Young Kwak, Head of Exhibitions at the Leeum Museum of Art, will engage in an interview-style conversation with the artist. Suki Seokyeong Kang: Willow Drum Oriole runs through December 31, 2023.