2024 UK X France X Germany Open Call: Ordinary World
Our Open Call exhibition ‘Ordinary World’ is a collaborative exhibition between KCC UK, Germany and France.
In June 2023, KCC UK X Germany X France held an Open Call for art works under the theme of 'Ordinary World'. The submissions were judged by influential jurors from each country (Gina Buenfeld-Murley (UK), Maria Lund (France), Shi-Ne Oh (Germany)) to ensure that artistic perspectives from different countries were reflected in a balanced way, and five contemporary artists (Yang Ha, Inkyung Kwon, Jiyoon Park, Jungkyun Shin and Miguel Rozas Balboa) were selected. A total of 600 artists from all over the world applied, resulting in a fierce 120:1 competition.
The first installment of this Open Call exhibition was held at KCC Germany from September to November 2023. The next one will be on display at KCC UK from February 20 to April 13 2024 and then, the final exhibition will take place at KCC France later in the year.
Ordinary World
‘Ordinary World’ is a response to the ongoing global disasters that have built across the post-pandemic world. In an era when disasters are steadily becoming more common due to the accumulation of continuous crises, the exhibition discusses how the existing concept of normal and newly formed ordinary are combined. This merging of the two concepts allows people to better understand how to address the emergence of the new norm. It can also provide insights into how to cope with and manage disasters more sustainably. With a world where disasters are commonplace, the exhibition explores what direction we can take with art.
Participating Artists
Yang Ha works on reconstructing images on flat media after collecting contradictory images from history and religion. The tragedy between macro and personal narratives is visualised using infantile and clumsy metaphorical elements.
She graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from Ewha Womans University in 2018, South Korea. In 2021, she completed her Master's in Painting at the Frank Mohr Institute in the Netherlands. Currently, she shuttles between Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Seoul, South Korea, working on her projects. Recent shows include ‘Open the Window’ (2023, OCI Museum of Art) and ‘It’s a Blast, You’re Welcome’ (2021, Sign), and Artist Start fund was awarded by Mondrian Fund in 2022.
Inkyung Kwon constructs collages from antique books and paints with ink and acrylic to build a vague and unrealistic urban landscape that mixes heterogeneous dimensions such as the past and present, night and day, arithmetic and urban, indoor and outdoor.
She studied Eastern-style painting for BA, MA, and Ph.D degrees at Hongik University. Her artworks have been shown in more than 150 group exhibitions across the globe and 13 solo exhibitions. Some of her works are housed in private collections as well as various institutions, including Artbank of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea.
JiYoon Park is an artist filmmaker who makes creative non-fiction cinema. Her films allow for ambiguities whilst exploring unique visual languages. She captures surreal and unfamiliar moments in our daily lives and recontextualises them to suggest unconventional ways of viewing the world.
She studied Television & Film and Art History at Ewha Womans University for BA, and completed her MA in Film Directing at The University of Edinburgh. Her works have been selected and shown worldwide in video channels such as NOWNESS, and at numerous Oscar & BAFTA qualifying film festivals, including AFI Docs, IDFA, Ji.hlava IDFF and the Open City Documentary Festival.
Jungkyun Shin is a media artist who reveals anxiety in landscapes that we encounter on a daily basis. He creates a narrative that mixes reality and fiction by reviewing universal ideas prevalent in society and tracing back the paths through which they are formed.
He studied Fine Art for BA and MA at Seoul National University. He has participated in 6 solo exhibitions and several group exhibitions. His artworks have been screened at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, SongEun Gallery and Doosan Gallery in Seoul, Korea.
Miguel Rozas Balboa is a Chilean-Belgian visual artist born in Chile currently living between Berlin and Brussels. His research mainly focuses on the relationship between politics, mass media and social minorities.
With a strong socio-political dimension, his visual work is a personal response to historical and social events, unveiled globalization and the crisis of the neo-liberal model. His work invites us to look beyond the distraction of the flashy and to consider the world around us by discovering beauty and humanity in unusual places.
Rozas studied Visual Arts in Chile (ARCOS), Würzburg (FHWS), Toulouse (ESAV) and at the Universität der Künste (UDK) in Berlin.
2024 KCC Open Call: Jurors
Gina Buenfeld-Murley has been a curator at Camden Arts Centre, a non-profit organisation that mainly highlights notable contemporary artists, for 13 years. She previously served as director of the Alison Jacques Gallery. She also expanded her international experience with curatorial residencies in Tokyo and Finland.
Maria Lund is a member of Comite professionnel des Galeries d’Art – CPGA and MAP – Paris Gallery Map and an independent gallerist of Galerie Maria Lund representing diverse international artists, providing expertise in commissioning works of art for specific private or public institutions. She collaborated with various institutions and private partners to organize temporary exhibitions.
Shi-Ne Oh is senior director of the Berlin branch of Sprüth Magers Gallery, based in London, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York. Previously, she served as director of PKM Gallery in Korea and Esther Siefer Gallery in Germany.
