The Centre Pompidou's 'Constellation' gets new star as Hanwha branch prepares Cubist exhibition

A new star in the art world’s “constellation” is opening soon at arguably one of Seoul's most iconic spots. The Centre Pompidou Hanwha is set to be unveiled on June 4 at the foot of the 63 Building in Yeouido, half a world away from the Paris flagship.

“We have launched an ambitious program: ‘Constellation,’ and one of our new stars is about to begin shining,” said Laurent Le Bon, president of the Centre Pompidou, during a press conference held ahead of the grand opening of the centre’s Seoul branch on Tuesday.

Constellation is the name of the Centre Pompidou’s outward-facing program of partner venues, and Le Bon, speaking through interpretation in French, made a clear point about the flagship venue, which is currently closed for renovation until 2030.

“Some people think we are closed for good, but that’s false — we are more alive than ever,” Le Bon said.

The new “star” arrives in Korea with an inaugural exhibition that organizers call “the most important Cubist exhibition in Asia in the last 50 years.” The exhibition, titled “The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision,” showcases 91 works by 43 artists from the Pompidou collection, alongside a separate Korean section of 21 works by 11 artists.

Centre Pompidou Hanwha is the product of a four-year partnership between the founding institution and the Hanwha Foundation of Culture, Hanwha Group’s dedicated nonprofit for sustainable development of Korean culture. The new Yeouido center arrives with an admission that the Hanwha foundation’s chairman, Lee Sung-soo, did not try to glaze over.

Asked why Hanwha had chosen to host a Pompidou branch rather than build a museum on its own collection, Lee acknowledged that the foundation has no collection of comparable caliber.

“We are not currently an arts facility that starts with its own independent collection,” Lee admitted.

Centre Pompidou Hanwha is positioning itself instead “as a museum based on partnerships with major overseas institutions,” according to Lee, with the possibility, eventually, of acquiring works of its own in the future.

The choice of Cubism for the theme of the center’s inaugural exhibition is partly to do with the home institution’s catalogue — the Pompidou's holdings, as Christian Briend, the show’s lead curator and head of the museum’s Modern Collections department, put it, are “rightly considered worldwide as a benchmark collection.”

“By systematically dismantling volumes, the Cubists called into question the traditional laws of perspective, representing forms not as they had been seen up to that point, but as they are conceived intellectually,” Briend said. “That is the great insight of Cubism.”

The show rejects the old idea that “essential Cubism” was restricted to Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger and the like.

“There is not one Cubism; there are several Cubisms that developed in Paris during the key period,” Briend said.

Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger — names that are perhaps less circulated among Korean audiences — receive special attention during the new show at Centre Pompidou Hanwha.

One qualm is true, however, that Korea has hosted plenty of foreign-branded exhibitions over the last two decades — from brands such as Louis Vuitton and Cartier — and that buzz and visitor numbers are not the same as connection to the local art ecosystem. Such partnerships have “raised considerably” awareness of the broader exhibition culture in Korea, but the real question is whether they touch the culture itself, explained Lim Keun-hye, the Hanwha foundation’s director of exhibitions.

Lim pointed to the foundation’s existing infrastructure — an overseas residency for young Korean artists, and Space ZeroOne, a nonprofit space the foundation opened last year in New York's neighborhood of Tribeca — as evidence that the partnership with Pompidou would go beyond importing. “Korea Focus,” the upcoming inaugural show’s Korean section, is the first instance.

The section sets work by renowned Korean artists such as Kim Whan-ki, Yoo Young-kuk, Park Re-hyun, Lee Soo-auck and others alongside new commissions from contemporary Korean artists and studios. One commission, an animation by artist Kwon Ha-yoon, takes the famous poet Yi Sang's experimental work and animates his sketches to the rhythms of his verse.  

“Ultimately, ‘Korea Focus’ is not an attempt to say ‘Cubism also existed in Korea,” Cho Ju-hyun, head curator for the section, told reporters. “It tries to show how Korean modern art met and collided with international cultural movements and generated a new sensibility in the process.”

The timing of Centre Pompidou Hanwha’s opening is a triple anniversary — 140 years of Korea-France diplomatic relations, the Pompidou’s 50th and the Hanwha foundation’s 20th.

“It isn’t every day that one opens a cultural venue to defend what we love, namely artists,” declared Le Bon.

After its opening to the public on June 4, the Centre Pompidou Hanwha’s “The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision” exhibition will run through Oct. 4, with admissions for adults priced at 28,000 won ($18.6).

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]