Exhibition:

Kunstformen der Natur in MoCA Busan

4 May 2021
22 Sep 2021

The Kunstformen der Natur exhibition is back. This time in Korea, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, as part of the Sustainable Museum: Art and Environment exhibition.

In this era of growing awareness of the environmental crisis, they want to begin with the observation that there is no mention of exhibitions, resource-intensive spectacles and the museum system that enables such exhibitions.

The intention is not to highlight the hardships facing museums, nor to condemn them. The key point is to recognize that current museum systems, created under capitalism and now near-universal, are maintained at the cost of violence towards and destruction of the environment. The future envisioned by this exhibition must emerge from that which exists in the present and, in general, that which exists in the present must first be properly understood if we are to reach the future.

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Visitors at MoCA Busan during the Sustainable Museum exhibition - Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Busan. Photograph by Studio Jeongbiso. © 2021 Museum of Contemporary Art Busan. MoCa Busan

Kunstformen the exhibition

More than a century ago, biologist Ernst Haeckel scored a hit with his amazing illustrations of unseen organisms. We collected all original lithographs and blew them up to 5 times life-size for our exhibition.

Kunstformen der Natur

First published in sets of 10 between 1899 and 1904, Kunstformen der Natur is not only a book of illustrations, rather, but it is also the ‘summarization of artist, sociologist Ernst Haeckel’s view of the world’. It was also a highly influential book for 20th-century art, architecture and design, bridging the gap between science and art. In particular, many artists associated with Art Nouveau were influenced by Haeckel's images, including René Binet, Karl Blossfeldt, Hans Christiansen, and Émile Gallé.

MoCA Busan

The Museum of Contemporary Art Busan is a Busan-based public art museum that focuses on contemporary art. As the name suggests, it aims to introduce a new trend in the arts, focusing on contemporary art including new media art. The issues of nature and ecosystem are their priority since they are closely related to the geographical environment of the art museum and the future of humankind. As human beings and the citizens of Busan are at the centre of operating the art museum, they take the role of education through art and culture very seriously, as well as the relationship between art and daily life.

Information

Kunstformen der Natur in MoCA Busan
as part of Sustainable Museum: Art and Environment
May 4, 2021 - September 22, 2021
Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, Korea

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Sustainable Museum exhibitionposter at MoCA Busan - MoCa Busan