Director of Gana Art Gallery in New York City
WHITEWALL: Can you begin by giving me a short history of the gallery?
JUNG BONG LEE: Our Seoul (South Korea) gallery opened twenty-five years ago. It concentrated on well-known Western artists. On the side we supported artists from Korea and continued to promote them. At the art fairs in the 1980’s we would focus on these Korean artists. Then in 1998 we opened the gallery in Paris, and now just this March we opened in New York. We also founded an auction house in Seoul. And we operate a private museum that used to be called the Total Museum. This was the first private museum established in Korea. The director didn’t have the energy to run the museum by himself anymore, so he asked us to step in. Since this happened we have been developing a number of other programs such as an Artists in Residence program. The new name of the museum is the Jang Hueng Art Park, in Jang Hueng town.
WW: Please tell me more about the new gallery space in New York?
JBL: As I said before, we opened in March. This year we have focused on Korean artists. Next year we are going to show some other Asian artists including Japanese artists, Indian artists, and maybe some Chinese artists. Korea is very commercial, so a lot of conceptual artists are not recognized there. But the market in New York is more open to this kind of work, so the gallery can provide a venue for some more of this conceptual work, and some video.
WW: How has this art fair gone for you?
JBL: It has gone a lot better than expected. We tried to bring art that was not so expensive, mostly under ten thousand dollars. And the most expensive is around fifty thousand dollars. With the fair we are breaking even, but not making a huge factory profit. We are also showing at the PULSE art fair where we have a single-artist booth. Last year PULSE was really good and exciting. But this year it is a little more difficult there, maybe because of all the satellite fairs here around SCOPE. Maybe this has meant that more people just wandered around here (SCOPE). But SCOPE has gone beyond expectations this year.
WW: Tell me about how you chose to design the installation of your booth here?
JBL: Well, we always have artists who are very showy, and whose work stands out. We put this piece here by Yong Ho Ji right here in the middle to lure people in. The sculpture of Elvis on the outside of the booth (made of magazine pages), made by Yoo Young-Wun, has brought a lot of people in. Then we have some very serious artists, such as Lee Jung Woong. We will be having a show of his work at the gallery next month. And we put him near the entry wall. A very serious photographer we have showing here is Seung Woo Back. He has already had shows in Texas and Los Angeles, and will have an important show opening in Zurich soon. We will be exhibiting his work at the gallery next September. We also have the cheaper work up as I mentioned before.
WW: Beyond what you told me about the gallery’s plans to begin showing some new, non-Korean artists, what are your plans for the gallery in the next year?
JBL: We are trying to take a little bit of a different step. In Korea our gallery is much more traditional and there is not room to show certain types of art. In New York we have two floors. Before this we have been showing a different solo exhibition both upstairs and downstairs. In the future we are planning on having one solo exhibition downstairs and more experimental projects upstairs.
