Visual indexes for this photographer are available for subscribers.There is so much more to explore when you subscribe. Subscriptions
Bohnchang Koo, one of Korea’s most influential photographers, was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1953. After receiving a degree in business administration, Koo initially worked for a multi-national corporation. He ultimately left that career to pursue his interest in art, and in 1985, he earned a degree in photography at Fach Hoch Schule in Hamburg, Germany. In the mid 1980s, Koo returned to Seoul where he began his professional photography career. In the last two decades, Koo has exhibited his work extensively, including over 22 solo exhibitions in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Recent U.S. shows were at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. His work is in major museum collections in Europe and Asia, and in the United States can be found in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In his roles as photographer, educator, and exhibition planner, Koo has been instrumental in shaping and promoting contemporary Korean photography. For the FotoFest Biennial in 2000, in Houston, Texas, Koo and FotoFest organized the first major show of Korean photography in the United States. The show, Contemporary Korean Photographers, brought the work of Koo and his peers to the world-stage at this internationally renowned photographic festival. Koo’s work has always dealt with impermanence, with the decay and disappearance of living things. In his recent work, Koo continues this long journey to capture the fleeting and the mortal. In these spare natural landscapes—the sea, pine needles on snow, dust on a wall, withered vines —the artist renders scenes of exquisite beauty while evoking the inexorable passage of time. Art critic Hyunsook Kim writes that Koo, "photographs images of the fragile and the fleeting, never the immortal, of distance and solitude, never attachment or survival. An object gets old from use, remaining indifferent to artistic intention and control, attentive only to its own unerring interior progression, which leaves its disappearing traces long after the photo has been taken, thus moving its past into the future. And thus artist and spectator, who exist outside the photo and cannot enter it, must wander as strangers. From the initial choice of subject, loss is inevitable… Destiny‘s fleeting object, disappearance and sadness of life even before life ever was, returns to silence. In this fleeting is splendor, refinement and beauty." [Courtesy of Gallery 339] Education and teaching 2004 Guest Professor, Pentiment, Hamburg Summer School 1999-01 Professor of Photography, Kaywon College of Art and Design, Seoul 1999 Visiting Professor, Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design, London 1997 International Fellowship, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London 1986-98 Photography lecturer, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 1992 Guest Professor, Pentiment, Hamburg Summer School 1980-85 Diploma Fachhochschule (Photography), Hamburg 1971-75 Yonsei University (Business Administration), Seoul Solo exhibitions 2006 Kukje Gallery, Seoul 2006 "Koo Bohnchang" Kahitsukan, Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto 2005 "Portraits of Time", White Room Gallery, LA 2005 "La beaute endormie" Langon, France 2004-05 "Masks", "White", Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris 2003 "Bohnchang Koo: Recent work," Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York 2003 "Masks," The Museum of Photography, Seoul 2003 "White," "In the Beginning," Picture Photo Space, Osaka 2002 "Fragile Tremors," San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, U.S.A. (curated by Carol McCusker) 2002 "Masterworks of Contemporary Korean Photography", Peabody Essex Museum, U.S.A. (curated by Clark Worswick) 2002 "In the Beginning", Shadai Gallery, Tokyo 2001 Prinz Gallery, Kyoto 2001 Base Gallery, Tokyo 2001 Samsung Rodin Gallery, Seoul 2001 Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco 2000 "White", Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York 2000 "Good-bye Paradise" Gallery Image, Aarhus, Denmark 1999 "Flow" Gallery Won, Seoul 1995 "In the Beginning", Gallery Ississ, Kyoto 1995 "Breath" Seomi Gallery, Seoul 1993 "Good-bye Paradise" Seomi Gallery, Seoul 1990 "The sea of Thought" Seomi Gallery, Seoul 1988 "Clandestine Pursuit in the Long Afternoon", Gallery Pusan, Pusan 1987 "A One Minute Monologue", Gallery Wide, Tokyo 1987 Photo Interform, Osaka 1985 "Twelve Deep Sighs" Hanmadang Gallery, Seoul 1984 Fotogenes, Hamburg, Germany 1983 Pine Hill Gallery, Seoul Group exhibitions 2005 "Stilled", Gallery 339, Philadelphia, U.S.A. 2004 "Alchemy of Daily Life," National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea 2004 "Water", FotoFest 2004, Houston, U.S.A. 2003 "Facing Korea," Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam 2003 "East of Eden," 14 Wharf Road, London 2003 "Four Contemporary Korean Photographers," Galerie Gana-Beaubourg, Paris 2002 "Two Korean Photographers" Photo-Eye Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2002 "Now, What is Photo?" Gana Art Center, Seoul 2002 "Korean Contemporary Photography" The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Sendai mediatheque, Japan 2002 "Photographie Contemporaine Coreenne" La Galerie Photo, Montpellier, France 2002 "Gaggles, Flocks and Coveys, Further Exaltations and Murders: A Bird Show," Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York 2002 "Floating" Art Center Silkeborg Bad, Denmark 2002 "Everyman: A Search for the Male Form" Camerawork, San Francisco 2002 "Three-Persons Show" Kumho Museum, Seoul 2002 Asia Photo Biennale-Living in a City" Gallery La Mer, Seoul 2001 "Awakening" Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney 2001 "Photo Festival" Gana Art Center, Seoul 2000 "Standing on the Threshold of Time" Odense Foto Triennale, Odense, Denmark 2000 "Moonlight Becomes You - A Thousand and One Nights of Peace on Earth", The Center for Photography, Woodstock, New York 2000 "Contemporary Korean Photographers," FotoFest 2000, Houston 1999 "Phenomena" The Friends of Photography, Ansel Adams Center, San Francisco 1999 "Fragments of Document and Memory," 3rd Tokyo International Photo-Biennale, Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo 1998 "Landscape and Man," Ostasiatiska Museum, Stockholm 1998 "Alienation and Assimilation," Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago 1998 "Poetics of Time," Korean Contemporary Art, Ho-Am Museum of Art, Seoul 1998 "Body and Photography," Hanlim Art Museum, Daejun 1997 Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London 1996 Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seoul 1996 A.O.I. Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1996 National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea 1996 Kumho Art Museum, Seoul 1996 "SIAF," COEX Center, Seoul 1995 "Art at Home," Seomi Gallery, Seoul 1995 Gwangju Museum of Modern Art, Gwangju, Korea 1995 Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeongju, Korea 1995 "Body or Gender," Gallery Nun, Seoul 1994 Pima Community College Art Gallery, Tucson, Arizona 1994 Ursula Blickle Prize, Kraichtal, Germany 1994 "Horizon of Korean Photography," Gong Pyung Art Center, Seoul 1993 Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia 1992 "Oh, Korea!" Jahamun Museum of Art, Seoul 1992 "A Group of Young Artists," National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea 1991 Total Museum, Seoul 1990 Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York 1990 "Mixed Media," Kumho Art Museum, Seoul 1990 Taipei Sunny-Gate Gallery, Taiwan 1988 "The New Wave of Photography". Walkerhill Art Center, Seoul Awards 2003 Gangwon Documentary Prize, Korea 2000 Lee Myoungdong Prize, Korea Collections National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea Municipal Museum of Art, Daejeon, Korea Samsung Museum of Art, Korea Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea The Museum of Photography, Seoul Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Henry Buhl Collection, New York San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Museum of Art and Craft, Hamburg Shadai Gallery, Tokyo Kahitsukan, Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Reykjavik Museum of Photography, Iceland |
LuminousLint
@LuminousLint