A solo exhibition of Sung Chan-gyeong, who worked as a poet, plastic artist, and performance artist

Reflecting on the meaning and value of an attitude that cherishes existence itself

The Seoul Museum of Art (Director Baek Ji-sook) presents Sung Chan-gyeong's solo exhibition <Sung Chan-gyeong, Master of Cheonggeumnu> at the Seoul Museum of Art Nam-Seoul through May 29.

<Sung Chan-gyeong, Master of Cheonggeumnu> connects with “Poetry”, the Seoul Museum of Art's 2022 exhibition agenda established in the hope of recovering emotion in difficult times. As a poet, Sung Chan-gyeong used his literary background as a conceptual and narrative foundation, pursuing his creative work across a wide range of genres including performance and plastic art. In particular, the artist's endeavor to discover hidden value and beauty in used and discarded objects offers a glimpse of the “poetic attitude” that Heidegger described as a way out of the age of spiritual destitution.

This exhibition sheds light on the artist's pioneering activity as a convergent, interdisciplinary artist who linked literature with plastic and performance art, and seeks to reveal his prescient character in raising ecological and development-oriented social issues from as early as the 1960s and 1970s.

Cheonggeumnu (清襟樓) was the artist's study and creative space, a name that signifies a place where young people aspiring to scholarship and literature gather. Cheonggeumnu is a signboard inscription handed down through generations of the family and always hung in the artist's study, written in the hand of Yi Ik-hoe (1767–1843), a civil official of the late Joseon period. The title borrows from the tradition of old scholars who hung a signboard in their living space and called themselves the master of that signboard. In this exhibition, the study Cheonggeumnu is recreated within the gallery to visualize the totality of the artist's world of art.

The exhibition is organized into five sections, including “Cheonggeumnu” and “Prayed with Delight,” presenting the artist's character as a poet, performance artist, and plastic artist.

△<Cheonggeumnu: The Artist's Study> recreates the poet's total spiritual world as an embodied space. Centered on his desk are the altar at which the artist prayed every day during his lifetime and the phonograph on which he played Schubert's music. It also presents materials and works that illuminate his major poetic theories, such as ecological poetry, object poetry, and dense-core poetry.

△<Conversation with Mr. Yao: Words + Art> consists of an archive of video and photographs, along with plastic works, related to eight word-art performances in which the artist sought to give the audience joy, aesthetic experience, and deep impression through “words spoken aloud.”

△<Prayed with Delight: Matter and Material Rights> shows the artist's activities in practicing “material rights”—the idea that matter too has rights—by turning his own house into an exhibition space for discarded objects and naming it the “Material Orphanage.” On display are works in which the artist breathed life into discarded beings through meticulous exploration of materials and free imagination.

△In <Aurora>, one can see the artist's varied gaze toward his surroundings, including plastic works and drawings that he perceived and realized through the cosmic rhythm inherent in the world.

△<The Master Who Teaches the Answer: Sung Chan-gyeong's Odes> presents his work of writing poems and creating objects in honor of masters from various fields whom he loved, from Chusa Kim Jeong-hui to Schubert, Paul Cézanne, and Henry Moore.

Baek Ji-sook, Director of the Seoul Museum of Art, said, “I hope visitors will encounter firsthand the art-filled world of <Sung Chan-gyeong, Master of Cheonggeumnu>, who spent his life writing poems, turning screws, making drawings, and performing.”

During the exhibition period, the museum will hold the poetry reading <Earth>, the 12-hour live poetry-writing relay performance <Twelve Hours at the Desk>, and the children's art-making workshop <Jewel Field>. Detailed information is available on the website.

For safe and comfortable viewing, the exhibition operates on a reservation basis, and detailed information on the viewing schedule and programs can be found on the Seoul Museum of Art website. 02-598-6247