Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA; General Director Choi Eunju) proudly presents Koo Bohnchang’s Voyages, a retrospective by a key representative of contemporary Korean art, Koo Bohnchang (b. 1953).

Koo has played a crucial role in the foundation and development of contemporary Korean photography from the 1980s to the present. The artist stirred a sensation in the Korean photography and art world with his new concept and form of “making photo” in works presented in The New Wave of Photography (May 16 –June 17, 1988, Walkerhill Museum of Art, Seoul), an exhibition he organized as a curator and showed in as one of the artists. The idea of photography taking off from its traditional role of recording or documenting, to becoming an art form charged with subjective expressions that reflect attributes of various mediums like painting, sculpture and print, penetrates Koo’s entire oeuvre, and opened new territories in Korean contemporary photography.

The exhibition includes over 500 works and 600 resource materials from 43 of the artist’s major series, including his iconic Vessel, Gold, Interiors, Soap, and In the Beginning projects.