David Hockney to Debut First-Person Narrative Media Art Exhibition in Seoul

SEOUL, Oct. 30 (Korea Bizwire) – British artist David Hockney’s artworks are back in Seoul. This time, they are in an interactive art form, in which the artist himself gives a first-person narrative on his artmaking backed by an emotive score.

The 50-minute immersive art show, “Bigger & Closer (Not Smaller & Further Away),” is brought to Seoul by Lightroom, a joint venture between 59 Productions and the London Theatre Company, in its first foray into another country, in collaboration with the Etnah Company in Seoul. Lightroom opened its first venue in London in February.

At a media briefing Monday, Lightroom CEO Richard Slaney said he was “very excited” to launch Lightroom Seoul in a city replete with “creative possibilities” and to present the 360-degree film about the famed artist as its inaugural show.

“Bigger & Closer” features the octogenarian artist’s artworks that span six decades on Lightroom’s four vast floor-to-ceiling walls and the floor. The audiovisual show introduces viewers to how the artist sees and looks at his surroundings, in a cycle of six themed chapters divided by subject matter.

Unlike many similar immersive shows with dead artists like Vincent Van Gogh, this one stands out as a show with a living artist who was deeply involved in the production.

“When we first started working with David, we projected some of his images, large-scale for him to understand them. And the first thing he did was stand next to us and describe what we were looking at and recollected his process and how he made that piece,” Slaney said of the initial show-making process four years ago.

“And that’s becoming a central part of the show,” he said, adding the “overriding theme” of the show is “looking closely” at “every little grass, every part of a tree, every part of the nature of the surrounding area,” like the artist did and still does.

Hockney is well known for his early adoption of new technologies, like the iPad, in his lifelong artistic endeavors.

“David was fascinated by the scale of the possibility of technology in this way. So we were very excited to see what he came up with,” Slaney said, adding the show is “the result of a collaboration across three years and across multimedia to make something that’s completely unique.”

And the artist was satisfied with the outcome, Slaney said.

“He is thrilled with the results because it does something different for him. You know his work is in a million galleries around the world. This project speaks directly to people and speaks differently,” he said.

“We have, in London, 3-, 4- or 5-year-old children, at the same time people who are in their 90s, all enjoying the same thing together. Certainly, that’s very powerful.”

In April 2019, the Seoul Museum of Art held a large-scale exhibition of David Hockney, in collaboration with the Tate Modern museum in London.

The show attracted more than 300,000 people during its less-than-five-month run, a huge audience that showed Hockney’s popularity in the country and his ability to hold artistic merit and meet public taste at the same time.

“Bigger and Closer” is set to open Wednesday and runs through May 31, 2024.

(Yonhap)