A museum is opening in the downtown area of Gajin Port below the Unification Observatory in Goseong County, Gangwon. The opening exhibition will be a solo invitational by Ahn Bong-gyun.
Goseong Museum opened on the 1st after Director Choi Yun-cheol, who runs KC Gallery in Sokcho, prepared for a long time. Choi's hometown is Goseong.
The museum building is a remodeled structure that once housed the Goseong County National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives office building, completed in 1977. The building that long served as a hub for pollock production on the East Coast and energized the local economy has been reborn as a museum.
The building was constructed with a reinforced concrete structure and has a total floor area of 160 pyeong. After remodeling, it was equipped with exhibition halls, a curatorial office, and storage. Nearly 50 years after it was built, it is assessed to exude the grand aura of a modern-era building.
Choi said, "Goseong Museum aims to be a place of comfort where people can pause amid life's hardships, and a cultural space where we can gain the strength to live together through art."
Invited for the opening exhibition, artist Ahn Bong-gyun works with tactile text and images. He has held 20 solo exhibitions and is actively creating through domestic and overseas biennales, triennials, and art fairs.
Ahn's works borrow the distinctive imagery of ancient archaeological inscriptions densely engraved with the "Rosetta Stone" and the Gai script. Focusing on visual weight and the formative qualities of shape, he actively reconstructs them on the picture plane. He draws Tongyang-style calligraphy, wood engraving, and seal engraving into a single canvas and combines intaglio and relief text with literary content and illusionistic painting. Visitors experience the dive between memory and oblivion in the letterboard images that surface and disappear.
Choi said, "In this exhibition, you can appreciate Ahn's early works to his recent pieces all in one place," adding, "It will be a valuable experience to share the journey of an artist who has sought a new path in tactile painting by fusing text and image."
The exhibition runs through Nov. 30 at all four galleries of Goseong Museum.