A Seoul design exhibition opens the doors to a private apartment to showcase how Koreans live at home

Up a hill and tucked behind the intersection of two major thoroughfares in Seoul’s Hannam-dong stands a residence that housed the Romanian ambassador to South Korea. Like so many special places, from the exterior, the ecru concrete and metal garage gate remains indistinct and blends into this residential quarter. However, this week during Seoul Art Week, long-time friends gyopo design darling Jillian Choi and Seoul-based interior designer Hye-Jin Ris Kim teamed up to do something quite novel for the South Korean capital: turn this Romanian residence into a home gallery showcase of the many faces of Korean creativity right now.

Choi had been having thoughtful conversations with Hye-Jin Kim and their friends, and PARKIM founders, Sandy Park and John Kim, about the perception and reception of current Korean art and design, and 'we thought, there’s a big desire to bring artists over there [to the US]. And how can we actually have something like Koreans showing Korean work, or [showing] how Koreans live in a Korean home. We were saying that we never see Korean designers in Korean homes,' explains Choi.

So the group decided to look for an exhibition space, or a pop-up on a commercial avenue. They secured one, and then a month ago, it fell through. Hye-Jin had an idea. Why not offer up her 1985 Hannam house, in a diplomatic gesture echoing the activities of space’s former occupants? Staging an interdisciplinary art and design showcase in a home isn’t a new concept, particularly in places like New York and Paris, where both Choi and Hye-Jin made their names. Choi was the Director of Global Exhibitions for Design Miami and Director of Collective Design, while Hye-Jin cut her chops with India Mahdavi.

However, in Seoul, it’s not customary to open one’s home to strangers, which in effect is what an apartment gallery is. As Choi offers, 'The Koreans who’ve come through have been saying that they've never seen anything like this. When we thought about this concept, we asked, what happens behind closed doors when people aren't looking and also outside of the expectations of society, and, a global society?'

And so, the exhibition 'Behind Closed Doors' was born from this group of friends pulling together a list of 24 Korean artists and designers – many of them close friends (sensing a theme here?) – who either live in Korea or are part of the diaspora and returned to Korea, or who’ve lived/worked both inside and out of the country (a very common experience for both the 1.5 and MZ Generations).

The grouping includes known names in the West like Kwangho Lee (a Salon 94 Design artist), Se Oh (rep’d by Tang Cont), Jesse Chun (on Commonwealth and Council’s roster) and Casper Kang (formerly of Studio Concrete), as well as homegrown stalwarts like conceptual artist Seung Neung Kyung (represented by Hyundai Gallery) and Internet-famous cat-obsessed Taewon Ahn.

Choi offers that the exhibition, 'is at the intersection of art and design, and the blurring of the lines is something that these artists are exploring as well.' Many of the works look like sculpture but are in fact functional, such as Hakmin Lee’s aluminum seating pieces or Seongil Choi’s 'Mirror Blocks Stool,' or look functional but are an art work, like Yerin Park’s carved porcelains that look like vases but are not, or Heakyoung Jang’s resin-marble 'Material Notes' series that could be seen as building blocks.

'We don't have to be confined by these labels,' says Choi, to which Hye-Jin adds, 'There’s something more to being Korean, more multi-cultural, than people expect. We often are obligated to be Korean in a certain way, but we wanted to explore outside of that.