Seoul, Korea.- The Seoul Art Center is pleased to announce the retrospective of the acclaimed American artist and photographer David LaChapelle on view through February 26th at the Hangaram Design Museum. Hugely anticipated, this is LaChapelle’s second Asian museum retrospective after a widely successful reception in Taipei, Taiwan in 2010. With nearly two hundred works, it will present the most comprehensive selection of LaChapelle’s photographic works ever seen in Asia, spanning over twenty years of his artistic career from the 1980s to 2011. LaChapelle is known internationally for his exceptional talent in combining a unique hyper-realistic aesthetic with profound social messages. Alongside his earlier works commissioned for fashion and celebrity editorials, the exhibition will showcase LaChapelle’s recent artworks such as The Raft of Illusion, the site-specific installation Chain of Life and his most recent work Gaia.
LaChapelle’s photography career began in the 1980s showing his artwork in New York City galleries. His works caught the eye of Andy Warhol who offered him his first job as a photographer at Interview Magazine. Since then, LaChapelle has worked for the most prestigious international publications such as Italian Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ and Rolling Stone, photographing personalities as diverse as Madonna, Lance Armstrong, Uma Thurman, Elizabeth Taylor, David Beckham, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hillary Clinton, and Muhammed Ali, to name a few. In 2006, LaChapelle decided to leave the world of publishing and magazines to return to where he started, creating work for exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. LaChapelle has been the subject of exhibitions in both commercial galleries and leading public institutions around the world. He has had solo museum exhibitions at the Barbican Museum, London (2002), Palazzo Reale Milan (2007), MALBA Museum, Buenos Aires (2007), Museo del Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City (2009), and the Musee de La Monnaie, Paris (2009), among many others. In 2010, he mounted two record-breaking solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel. In 2011, he has had a major exhibition of new work at The Lever House, New York, and a retrospective at the Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (open through March 2012).
After establishing himself as a fixture in contemporary photography, LaChapelle decided to branch out and direct music videos, live theatrical events, and documentary films. His directing credits include music videos for artists such as Christina Aguilera, Moby, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, The Vines and No Doubt. His stage work includes Elton John’s The Red Piano and the Caesar’s Palace spectacular he designed and directed in 2004. His burgeoning interest in film led him to make the short documentary Krumped, an award-winner at Sundance from which he developed RIZE, the feature film acquired for worldwide distribution by Lion’s Gate Films. The film was released in the US and internationally in the Summer of 2005 to huge critical acclaim, and was chosen to open the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.
David LaChapelle continues to be inspired by everything from art history and street culture, to the Hawaiian jungle in which he lives, projecting an image of twenty-first century pop culture through his work that is both loving and critical. He is quite simply the only photographic artist working today who has transitioned flawlessly from the world of fashion and celebrity photography to be enshrined by the notoriously discerning contemporary art intelligentsia.
The Seoul Arts Center, literally the Hall of Arts, is a cultural center in Seocho-gu, the southern area of Seoul, South Korea. Measuring in 12,0350 m², it consists of many different halls and centers for many diverse art forms. It began construction in 1984, and was fully opened in 1993. It was started with the intention of bringing a more solid aspect to the Korean arts and cultural scene, and to bring the Korean arts to an international level. It consists of the main Festival Hall, Calligraphy Hall, Music Hall, Arts Center, Center of Archives, Education Hall which are all housed indoors, and the Circular Plaza, Street of Meetings, Traditional Korean Gardens, an outdoor Theater, and a market place. The central venue, which is the Opera House, was built basing designs on the traditional hat for Korean men, the “gat”, worn during the Joseon Dynasty by grown men who had passed the gwageo. The Music Hall was designed with the idea of a Korean fan in mind. The Hangaram Design Museum within the Seoul Arts Center is sSituated in the east wing of the Center, and opened its doors in 1990. It concentrates on modern and contemporary art enabling younger people to enjoy their visits. Measuring in at 15,434 m², its first and second floors are connected so that major works of art can be displayed without difficulty. The museum uses natural lighting installed in many respectable European art museums to illuminate its art works. Visit the arts center’s website at … www.sac.or.kr/eng