until May 21, 2023

Artist Talk: April 7, 4 - 5PM｜Art Hall (B1), Art Sonje Center (Register 신청하기)

Gallery Hyundai
14 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03062 Korea

Gallery Hyundai is pleased to announce Whoseum of Who?, the first exhibition of British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara. 

Building on a series centered on his cartoon character Who the Bær, Gallery Hyundai will present approximately 40 new works that include drawings, videos, paintings and site-specific installations. Since its debut in 2021 at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, exhibitions of Fujiwara’s acclaimed series Who the Bær have travelled to Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam and Prada Aoyama, Tokyo. The series has also been presented across multiple media, from painting and sculpture, full scale installations, stop frame animations and a children’s book, to a Whotique – a boutique of Who the Bær – that produces merchandise by ‘Who’ and has collaborated with world-renowned fashion labels. 

Who the Baer was developed by the artist during the first pandemic lockdown as a ‘Dada-esque response to an increasingly absurd and incomprehensible world.’ Fujiwara’s character takes the form of an identity-free cartoon bear named ‘Who’ that moves through a hyper-mediated, image-obsessed world in search of a true self. With seemingly no race, no gender and no sexuality, ‘Who’ is only recognizable by their white fur, golden heart and impossibly long tongue. Doomed to forever be ‘only 2 dimensional’ and trapped in their status as an image, ‘Who’ poses earnest questions on the nature of a ‘true and authentic self’ in an era of hyper technological mediation. ‘Who’ has the unique ability to shapeshift and perform any identity they wish. Will ‘Who’ ever find a true, authentic self? For a cartoon character, isn’t it enough to simply appear to be authentic?  

In this exhibition at Gallery Hyundai, Fujiwara will present a new body of works that reshape and reinvent 20th century masterpieces through the lens of Who the Baer and explore themes from gender identity and image culture to internet dating and cultural appropriation. Working though the canon of Western art historical icons - from Picasso and Matisse to Basquiat and Hirst - Fujiwara’s Who the Baer pastiche paintings and collages are housed in a Whoseum of Who – a museum of artworks of ‘Who.’ In this Whoseum, audiences are invited on a journey through 20th century art history and to witness Who the Baer as they morph, adapt and appropriate the men, women, animals and objects that are the subjects in each of the masterpieces. Lazing languidly on a couch, ‘Who,’ in one work, stares nakedly out at the viewer from a Matisse-like setting, seemingly paralysed in their new-found identity as a 20th century female muse. In another, Who the Baer finds themselves as the subject of Picasso pastiches on still lives – horrifically reduced to a tea pot or skull and unable to express themselves. Presented as a fairy tale of endless possibilities, the works in the exhibition shed light on the philosophical struggle of Who the Baer as they transform endlessly in their restless desire just to ‘be’. 

As a part of the Whoseum concept, Fujiwara will present a new pop-up Whoseum store or Whotique in collaboration with Hyundai Gallery. Housed in Art Cube, a new line of Who the Baer merchandise including household goods, clothing and accessories featuring imagery from the exhibition will be available for sale in limited quantities and exclusively on site. Conceived as a conceptual extension of the Who the Baer project, Fujiwara’s Whotique offers audiences a chance to own and participate in a piece of the Whoniverse.