Publications

AHL Foundation has published several books highlighting the rich history of Korean contemporary artists and their impact on the contemporary art world. A multitude of prominent artists and academics contributed to these publications, which reside in the collections of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea and the Library of Congress. These works were published in conjunction with several retrospective exhibitions held by the AHL Foundation’s Archive of Korean Artists in America (AKAA).

A three-part exhibition series from the AKAA titled Coloring Time, Shades of Time and Weaving Time was organized by the AHL Foundation to survey the activities and highlight the achievements of Korean artists in the U.S. The exhibition was presented in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Service New York at Gallery Korea in 2013, 2014, and 2015. Part two of the exhibition Shades of Time was also presented at the Queens Museum in the summer of 2014. In 2018, Postmodernism and Aesthetics: Collide or Steer was held in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Center New York at Gallery Korea. This exhibition featured the works of 22 past awardees of AHL Foundation’s Contemporary Visual Art Awards.

	Coloring Time AHL Foundation and Korean Cultural Service of New York are proud to present some materials from the Archive of Korean-American Artists (AKAA). Korean artists such as Whanki Kim (1913-1974), John Pai (b. 1937), Nam June Paik (1932-2006) and Po Kim (b. 1917) started to settle down in New York in the 1960s while a large number of artists arrived here to study at various Mfa programs in the 1980s. Byron Kim, Y. David Chung, Ik-joong Kang, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and many talented young Korean-American artists lived and worked in New York in the 1980s. This exhibition catalogue presents a group of the first generations who set up their studios in the greater New York area in the 1960s to the 1980s. This exhibition catalogue of Coloring Time includes scholarly essays along with documents, photographs, drawings, and sketches of Korean-American artists as well as their early works classified into five themes in order to show a creative journey of Korean contemporary art transplanted in the Us.
	The Shades of Time The Shades of Time: An Exhibition from the Archive of Korean American Artists, Part Two: 1989-2001 was the second part of a larger project called “The Archive of Korean American Artists.” While the first part of the exhibition had about 45 artists including Whanki Kim, Po Kim, Nam June Paik, and Ik-Joong Kang, the second part focused on younger generations now in their 40s, many of whom are video, mixed media, computer graphics, and installation artists. Among more than 200 artists of this generation, about 46 artists were invited to exhibit their pivotal works stemming from the periods of the 1990s and the early 2000s. Many of them were affected by global events such as the IMF bailout of Korea during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 1998 market crash by the dot com bubble, anxiety of the Millennium Bug (so called “Y2K”) in 2000, and the catastrophic tragedy of 9/11 attacks.
	Weaving Time Weaving Time is the third installment of a long-term project titled the Archive of Korean Artists in America (AKAA). The exhibition includes a younger generation of artists who set up their studios in the US in the 2000s. Most artists in the third installment are still in their 40s and are making the transition from emerging artists and entering into their mid-careers. Many of them are conceptual, installation, or interdisciplinary artists. Comprised of approximately 70 works by 46 artists, as well as documentary materials, Weaving Time: An Exhibition from the Archive of Korean Artists in America, Part Three 2001-2013 is organized into five thematic sections and spans the first decade of the twenty-first century: Dismantling Boundaries, Transcendent Narrative, Cosmopolitan Citizen, Difference and Self-Reflexivity, and Subjective Community. This exhibition catalogue for Weaving Time includes scholarly essays along with documents, photographs, drawings, and sketches of 50 Korean-American artists.
	Postmodernism and Aesthetics: Collide or Steer? Postmodernism and Aesthetics: Collide or Steer? was an exhibition held in 2018 in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Center New York featuring works by 22 past awardees of AHL Foundation’s Contemporary Visual Art Awards. This companion publication overviews the current status of about 20 major artists from Korea living and working in the US. As transnational or immigrant artists, they adapted their artistic vocabulary to the demand of the New York art market, global art biennials, local art communities, or glossy art fairs around the world. The show divided artists and their works into the most popular binary themes of Postmodernism and High Modernism such as appropriation/originality; local/international; simulacra/real; personal/universal; and banal/avant-garde. Although applicable to subjective interpretations, each artist’s work can be seen in one of these categories, each with four or five artists.
	AKAA Interview Series In 2023, the AHL Foundation published a major work titled The Archive of Korean Artists in America (AKAA) which includes interviews conducted from 2016-2023 with 40 influential Korean contemporary artists across generations living in the United States. The extensive interviews span renowned artists born in the 1930s to emerging artists born in the 1990s. This one-of-a-kind publication preserves the artists’ own words and stories in their voices, providing an invaluable resource for research. The full interview transcripts are available to access on the AKAA website, creating a comprehensive and enduring portrait of the Korean diaspora artist community in America. (Managing Director: Jiyoung Lee and a foreword by Hyewon Yi, PhD.)

Publications

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