Cory Arcangel and his breadth of practice i-D Korea meets with Cory Arcangel to talk about his first solo exhibition in Korea.
Cory Arcangel's practice is nearly impossible to put into words. Arcangel, a pioneer of digital technology-based art, uses a variety of mediums, including music composition, video, video games, the internet, hacking, and so on, to analyze the lives we all lead today.
By Kim Doheon
This is your first solo exhibition in Korea. How do you feel about it?
It’s wild to finally visit Korea. What an honour! There are not many countries (if any?) that can count among their most famous artists an experimental media artist! Im talking about Paik of course ????
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In the group exhibition "Game Society" currently taking place at the MMCA, Seoul, you are participating and presenting your early works "Super Mario Movie" (2005) and "Let's Play: Hollywood" (2021). I'm curious about the background of your participation in "Game Society" and the reasons for selecting these two works for the group exhibition.
I got an email out of the blue a year or so ago from the creators of Game Society and they requested Super Mario Movie (2005) and /roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ Let's Play: HOLLYWOOD (2021). I don’t know the exact reasons they selected these works, but from my end it was perfect, as these 2 works are like bookeneds to me. One, Super Mario Movie (2005) is from the early 00’s done on the Nintendo NES, and the other, /roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ Let's Play: HOLLYWOOD (2021), is just a few years old, and for that one my studio and I made our own super computer. It’s always fun for me to show different eras of works together, as it helps me figure out a bit what I have done, and am doing.
It's interesting that you are simultaneously holding a solo exhibition and participating in a group exhibition in the same country. I'm curious about how you felt when you received the proposal for this and how you decided to proceed.
It was helpful to do both things at the same time. In fact, I thought of them together. Between the works in Game Society and the works in ✎╓✈ I think together they make a pretty good introduction to the width of things I have been up to over the past 25 years.
The image of the mega-yacht "Lionheart" created specifically for the Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul space where the exhibition is taking place is intriguing. The gallery description mentions that it provides a conceptual foundation for the exhibition. I would like to hear additional explanation about it.
Yah, in a way, mega-yachts — which I first saw in my hometown port of Stavanger — are a foundation for the show. Ive been thinking a lot about power both literally and poetically. So one on hand, we have these abstract aluminum “paintings”, and on the other hand, or to be exact, right at the entrance, we have a life-size image of a mega-yacht, the Lionheart. We work our way up from aluminum, a raw material, all the way up the chain — through contemporary art of course — to mega-yachts which are the material of the one percent of the one percent. Maybe it’s an expanse of the entirety of contemporary civilization?
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