Artists represented by Kukje Gallery—Michael Joo, Gala Porras-Kim, Jae-Eun Choi, Lee Ufan, Lotus L. Kang and Anish Kapoor (in order mentioned)—are participating in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia for approximately 6 months, as well as in various official collateral events and other exhibitions in the city. Under the theme of In Minor Keys, this year’s edition features the work of 110 artists and collectives from around the world, based on the vision and curatorial framework established by the late artistic director Koyo Kouoh, who passed away in May 2025. The title of the exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” refers to the musical notion that further suggests a journey of “collective scores” by bringing up the diverse voices that have been historically marginalized. Regarding this edition, the Biennale commented as follows: “It is an exhibition permeated with spirit, with a sacredness that puts the person, the human being, back at the heart of things, rediscovering the sense of being in the world by reacquiring a sense of proportion with respect to all earthly elements, and by looking at the sky once more.”


Michael Joo (b. 1966)
Title: In Minor Keys
Venue: Arsenale
Michael Joo showcases two large-scale installations in the Arsenale, where the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale unfolds. Working at the intersection of art and science, Joo has consistently explored perceptions, identity, and liminality through multifaceted practices. That Which Evaporates All Around Us (2026) is a large installation in a mobile structure assembled of massive fossil slabs collected over decades, which Joo describes as accumulated record of “deep time, the Anthropocene, and cultural stratification.” This work invites the viewers to physically experience condensed time and human existence in material form as bone-conducting transducers mounted on the underside of the fossil slabs convert sound into low-frequency vibrations. The vibrations pass through the stone, and the sound is “felt” by the body through spatial proximity. 
Another work on view is Noospheres (OG: CR Venice) (2026), part of the long-term collaborative project Organic Growth: Crystal Reef (OG: CR), which combines blockchain technology, digital community, algorithms, and marine research. The project foregrounds the direct and active engagement between physical and digital ecosystems to address issues of ecology and community, further connecting the artist’s ongoing interest in crystalline sculptural motifs, community-driven art practices, and decentralized networks.
Joo represented the Korean Pavilion at the 2001 Venice Biennale, presenting a duo exhibition with Do Ho Suh, and also participated in the group exhibition at Palazzo Malta in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Korean Pavilion.

Gala Porras-Kim (b. 1984)
Title: In Minor Keys
Venue: Applied Arts Pavilion, Arsenale
Gala Porras-Kim presents a range of works at the Applied Arts Pavilion in the Arsenale, organized in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London. Porras-Kim has long examined the complex relationships between cultural artefacts, institutions, and museological systems. Her interest lies in how cultural artefacts are classified and acquire narrative within historical contexts, developed in the exhibition through drawings, sculptures, and video works produced in relation to the methods of conservation. In this context, the artist focuses on how various actors within art and cultural institutions—such as conservators and curators—actively shape the meanings and functions of artifacts. Porras-Kim also explores how decay and deterioration can be generative, bringing forth the object’s other functions and producing new forms. These inquiries resonate with the exhibition’s broader approach to viewing aslant at the archive. Porras-Kim’s presentation is a special collaborative project, selected by Kouoh and participating out of competition.

Jae-Eun Choi (b. 1953)
Title: Grass Babies, Moon Babies
Venue: Japan Pavilion, Giardini
Jae-Eun Choi is participating in the Japan Pavilion exhibition in the Giardini of the Biennale Arte 2026. The only two Asian national pavilions—Korea and Japan—collaborate for the first time in the Biennale Arte 2026. Ei Arakawa-Nash, the participating artist of the Japan Pavilion, has invited artists across genres such as contemporary art, architecture, literature, performance, and more, to present a central theme of “care” in their practice. The collection of their works reflects “care” not only as an emotional value but also as a socially distributed, historically gendered structure of labor.
Especially this year, the Japan Pavilion expands on the framework of the national pavilion through active collaborations with multiple voices rather than a singular national representation. In this context, Jae-Eun Choi introduces her video installation Cycle (1995/2007). The work presented is an extension of her World Underground Project, reconstructing the project in a video format. Since its conception in 1986, World Underground Project visualizes the invisible passage and the trajectory of time through the traces of nature, recorded on washi paper that had been buried underground all around the world. Choi previously presented Micro-Macro (1995), a photographic work derived from the same project, for the Japan Pavilion in 1995, celebrating the 100th year of biennale. Cycle is a video work that records, through microscopic imagery, the growth patterns of microorganisms and organic matter formed on washi paper buried at the foot of Mount Toham in Gyeongju, revealing the cyclical order and generative processes inherent in nature.

Lee Ufan (b. 1936)
Title: Lee Ufan
Venue: SMAC Venice
Lee Ufan, a pioneer of the Japanese Mono-ha movement and a central figure in Korean Dansaekhwa, is the subject of a large-scale solo exhibition, Lee Ufan at San Marco Art Center (SMAC) Venice, presented as an official collateral exhibition of the 61st International Art Exhibition. Curated in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition traces the development of Lee’s visual language and philosophy over seven decades, featuring paintings, large-scale installations, and a newly commissioned site-specific work. Spanning eight spaces in the art center located at Procuratie in Piazza San Marco, the exhibition reflects the artist’s ongoing dialogue with architectural space, as well as his consistent commitment to shaping environments that evoke profound reflection and broaden perception. Almost in conjunction with the Venice presentation, another solo exhibition of Lee Ufan will take place in Dia Beacon, NY, showcasing new paintings and sculptures. The two exhibitions, unfolding across different continents, attest to his artistic achievements, which transcend genres and regions. 

Lotus L. Kang (b. 1985)
Title: The face of desire is loss
Venue: Bvlgari Pavilion, Spazio Esedra, Giardini
Lotus L. Kang has been selected as the inaugural artist for the Bvlgari Pavilion, the official partner project of the Venice Biennale. Known for her complexly layered environments that meld organic, structural and metabolic languages, the work of Lotus L. Kang gives poetic form to reflections on themes spanning inheritance, impermanence, memory, and translation. For the Bvlgari Pavilion, Kang presents The face of desire is loss, an installation that continues her enduring engagement with time as unruly, sedimentary and non-linear. A series of unfixed photographic film anchor the exhibition, suspended from lengths of steel joist. This film will remain continuously sensitive to its environment, developing over the course of the Biennale as it is exposed to the light and humidity of the pavilion. Amidst the skins, Kang installs a series of new sculptural works, rendered from tatami mats, cast objects, spirits, and other changeable forms. Encasing the windows of the space with lengths of 35mm celluloid, Kang disperses the film's duration into a flat, simultaneous plane, as stage lights cast shifting hues of interstitial light across the installation.

Anish Kapoor (b. 1954)
Title: Anish Kapoor: Palazzo Manfrin
Venue: Palazzo Manfrin, Cannaregio
Anish Kapoor’s solo exhibition is taking place at Palazzo Manfrin, concurrently held with the Biennale Arte 2026. The 16th-century building, which houses the artist’s foundation, will open to the public for the second time on this occasion. The exhibition focuses on the past five decades of Kapoor’s oeuvre, bringing together existing and yet-to-be-realized projects, alongside more than 100 architectural models, large-scale installations, and stainless steel sculptures. The exhibition features works from both past and present, including a newly realized large-scale version of At the Edge of the World (1998) and his representative Descent into Limbo (1992), as well as his sculptural series using Vantablack and the cement work Ga Gu Ma (2012). Through his sustained investigation of light, color, and materiality, Kapoor proposes new perceptual experiences in which the viewer’s perception is transformed, using sculpture to expand and absorb space.
 

Haegue Yang’s solo exhibition Haegue Yang: Star-Crossed Rendezvous is currently on view at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition features the artist’s sprawling installation Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024), making its North American debut, alongside another large-scale installation realized nearly a decade apart, Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Expanded, Replicated, and Restored to 1078 Times Its Size K123456 (2015).

Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun draws on the structural interplay of renowned Korean composer Isang Yun’s Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp, and Small Orchestra (1977, hereafter Double Concerto), in which the oboe and harp exchange melodic lines. Yang’s constellation of vibrant geometries is accompanied by choreographed moving light, further drawing on Yun’s reference to Korean folklore as a metaphor for the divided Korean Peninsula.

Another work in the exhibition, Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Expanded, Replicated, and Restored to 1078 Times Its Size K123456, is a modular installation that directly references the iconic cubic structures of American minimalist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). Yang enlarges the original form 1,078 times and suspends it upside down, emphasizing geometric clarity while allowing density and transparency to shift in response to the surrounding space. 
This juxtaposition of two markedly different works executed in the same material—Venetian blinds—demonstrates Yang’s continued interest in asymmetry. Presented as disparate parallels, these iconic works foreground her sustained engagement with doubling, materializing an exploration of intercontextuality between the two pieces.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a special collaborative program, Star-Crossed Rendezvous, will take place on March 10 in partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (hereafter LA Phil), another leading institution of the Grand Avenue Cultural District alongside the museum. Centered on Isang Yun’s musical composition, audiences will experience Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun at MOCA Grand Avenue from 5–8pm, followed by a performance at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where the LA Phil, conducted by Earl Lee, performs Yun’s Double Concerto with oboist Ryan Roberts, Principal Harp Emmanuel Ceysson, and the orchestra. Marking an encounter between contemporary art and music, the program also serves as a tribute by contemporary artists and musicians to Yun’s artistic world and enduring legacy.
 

Gala Porras-Kim showcases Non-Consenting Collaborators at the Villa Cerruti and the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Italy. Presented across two different venues, the project stems from the idea that objects we see in the institutional collections the result of multiple “actors” taking part: not only the artists who create the objects, but also the collectors, curators, conservators, and registrars who are involved in the whole process. Regardless of their intention, all these partakers function as “non-consenting collaborators” in shaping how works are presented to and understood by the audience.

The first part of the project focuses on the kitchen space of the Villa Cerruti, that is no longer functionally used and is excluded from public view. Objects that were originally stored in the cabinets and drawers were transferred to and now showcased in the Castello di Rivoli, where the objects are redefined as artworks through this temporary displacement. In turn, the emptied kitchen is refilled with substitute objects from the collection’s storage. Through this intervention, Porras-Kim shifts the function, status, and display context of objects, questioning institutional conventions. In particular, the testamentary requirement that works at the Villa Cerruti remain in the collector’s original arrangement further clarifies the artist’s intent, foregrounding the institutional conditions that shape the collection.

A second part of the project centers on Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Attese (1965). The work is displayed in two parts—the painting itself and the gilded frame personally chosen by the collector. They are separated from one another, shown side by side as a diptych. This presentation brings reveals four intertwined layers of intervention and collaboration—the artist, the collector, the conservator, and Porras-Kim—making visible the layers of authority and interpretation surrounding the artwork. Commissioned and curated by Fondazione Cerruti, the project critically reflects on the ethics of the collection and institutional structures. The project remains on view through March 22.
 

Kim Yong-Ik, Min Joung-Ki, and Ahn Kyuchul are participating in the group exhibition All That Photography in the Photography Seoul Museum of Art, Korea. Marking the institution’s first exhibition to span across the entire museum space, the exhibition highlights a variety of works across generations that use photography as a medium of creation, especially focusing on “photography” or “photographic imagery” as a method of recording the modern history of Korea after the 1950s.

In the exhibition, Kim Yong-Ik presents a photo essay work, To the “Winter of Sinchon” (1981), which was submitted to the Winter of Sinchon exhibition in 1981. The work comprises 14 images and texts that Kim took, capturing his inner anguish over the limitations and powerlessness of art amid the chaotic social and political reality following the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement.

Min Joung-Ki explores media experiments, visually depicting the political turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s through bold staging, using nature and the body as expressive media. This includes the photo-lithograph series Portrait of History (1986), which combines historical scenes from modern Korean history into a photomontage; the Gate to the Forest (1986) series, which offers a sharp insight into contemporary society and the inner self; and the lithography In the Forest (1986), created based on photographs taken on Gyeyangsan Mountain.

Meanwhile, Ahn Kyuchul showcases three early photographs—Box of light (1981), Landscape (1981), and Her Shadow (1981)—which form the foundation of his signature object-based practice, drawing attention to the perceptual qualities and media possibilities of photography. In particular, Landscape and Her Shadow are conceptual photographic works that record how objects and images exist within the flow of time and transformation of space, using poetic motifs such as leaves and the shadow of a woman.

All That Photography examines the potential of “photography” and “photographic images” in contemporary art, while reflecting on the changing currents of time through experimental works across various media. The exhibition is on view through March 1.
 

Haegue Yang’s first major survey exhibition in Switzerland, Haegue Yang: Leap Year, was on view at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich. Curated by the Hayward Gallery in London, UK, and presented subsequently at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the exhibition marked the final chapter of its tour, offering a comprehensive overview of Yang’s artistic inquiry spanning more than three decades.

Structured around key conceptual threads that run throughout Yang’s practice—Spiritual Quotidian, Quasi-Performativity, and Singular-Plural—the exhibition foregrounded her distinctive artistic vocabulary. This idiosyncratic conceptual framework is exemplified in Non-Indépliables, nues (2010/2020), in which empty drying racks are transformed into expressive anthropomorphic sculptures, evoking the repetitive rituals of folding and unfolding in ordinary life while hinting at the profundity of “bare” life. On the ground floor, blue-painted walls formed part of Quasi-Yves Klein Blue (2025). The work is an homage to Yves Klein (1928–1962), for which the museum team selected the color closest to his iconic “International Klein Blue” (IKB). By replacing the licensed pigment with locally available paint, the work raises questions about artistic legacy, authenticity, and institutional power dynamics.

Drawing from diverse cultural traditions, including Korean vernacular practices as well as modernist legacies, Yang has constructed environments that are at once sensorial and conceptual. Through materials, rituals, and spatial configurations, the exhibition reflected and embodied the fluidity of contemporary life and offered viewers a layered and contemplative experience. With its presentation in Zurich, Haegue Yang: Leap Year concluded a sixteen-month tour across three European countries.
 

Photographer Koo Bohnchang presents Through the Window I Saw, Anthology : The Bohnchang Koo’s Art Books - An Archives of Memory at gguggum art centre in Daegu, Korea. Marking the inaugural exhibition at the centre, the exhibition explores Koo’s artistic world through photobooks published between 1992 and 2025, alongside exhibition materials, objects, and an interview video.

A pioneering figure in Korean photography, Koo has been expanding and redefining the boundaries of art photography. After finishing his studies in photographic design in Germany in the 1980s, Koo proposed new ways of reading and interpreting photographs from the very beginning of his career. He contributed photos and images directly to books and magazines, challenging the conventions of traditional print media, which were largely dominated by text. 

The photobook Vision 1980, on view in the exhibition, presents photographs taken with a Nikon FM2 upon his return to Korea in 1980, capturing Seoul’s transforming urban landscape. Also featured are Koo’s early handmade portfolios, rarely seen catalogues, books that inspired his practice, and printed materials such as exhibition leaflets, which together illuminate his enduring influence in Korean art photography.

In particular, Koo has long regarded books as an independent artistic form in which his philosophy and sensibility are condensed, rather than just a document. Moving beyond conventional photography formats, the exhibition invites visitors to trace the artist’s inner world and extend artistic journey through the medium of books. This approach creates a resonance beyond photographic prints alone, offering a multi-dimensional perspective on Koo’s work. The exhibition runs through March 8, 2026.
 

Works by the Korean Danseakhwa masters Park Seo-Bo, Ha Chong-Hyun, Kwon Young-Woo, and Lee Ufan are featured in the group exhibition Art between Japan and Korea since 1945. Commemorating the 60th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan, the Yokohama Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Korea have co-organized a joint exhibition that re-examines the close exchanges between the two nations throughout their complex history and seeks a future of coexistence.

Presenting over 160 works by 50 artists from both countries, the exhibition is organized into five chronological chapters. Each chapter illustrates how the arts of both nations intersect against major historical turning points, such as Korea’s independence and defeat in World War II in 1945, and the normalization of diplomatic relations after twenty years, in 1965. The exhibition highlights how the artists of the time have coexisted and encountered one another in different environments, tracing the course of history.

The first chapter, Art Between the Borders: The Perspective of Zainichi Koreans, covers the erased stories of Zainichi (Koreans in Japan) artists from 1945 to 1965, a period marked by the absence of official political exchange following Korean independence. The following chapter, Nam June Paik and Japanese Artists, introduces the artistic exchanges and friendships between the pioneering figure, Nam June Paik, and Japanese artists despite the ongoing political tensions of the time. 

In the third chapter, A Broadened Path—Japan-Korea Relations after Normalization, the exhibition highlights the blossoming of cultural exchange following the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1965. Especially, From Point and From Line by Lee Ufan, who served as a bridge between the two art scenes, are presented alongside works by Japanese Mono-ha artists. The chapter also showcases early works by Dansaekhwa pioneers, such as Kwon Young-Woo’s 74-9 (1974), Park Seo-Bo’s Hereditarus 1-68 (1968), and Ha Chong-Hyun’s White Paper on Urban Planning (1970).

The fourth chapter, Art of a New Generation in a Period of Transformation, presents works from the early 1990s that expanded beyond traditional painting into experimental media. The final chapter, Solidarity and Living Together, explores the possibilities of coexistence shaped through art, focusing on artists who have confronted social and political realities since Korea’s democratization in 1987.

This exhibition, which offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between the two nations, will run at the Yokohama Museum of Art until March 22 before traveling to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, where it will open on May 14.