Korean New Art Museum held Etsu Egami's solo exhibition "Echoes of the Earth" as the opening exhibition, OAR Contemporary Art Museum

Gen de Art
Jul 1
3 min read

On April 8, 2025, a new art museum, the OAR Contemporary Art Museum, just opened in Gyeongju, South Korea. Gyeongju, South Korea, is the host city for APEC this year and has been attracting attention in recent years as the ancient capital of the Silla Kingdom, with UNESCO World Heritage sites. The museum's director, Kim Mun-ho, has been collecting art for many years and built the museum in Gyeongju with deep passion.

To commemorate the opening of the museum, we will be holding a solo exhibition by the world-renowned Japanese artist Egami Etsu, "Egami Etsu: Echoes of the Earth," from April 8 to September 21.

OAR Contemporary Art Museum <ETSU EGAMI: Echoes of the Earth

The exhibition will be academically supported by Stefanie Patruno, director of the State Museum of Art in Karlsruhe, Germany, which collects Egami Etsu's works.

As a representative artist of the third generation of postwar Japanese contemporary art, Egami Etsu explores the essence of communication by visualizing miscommunication such as misalignment, misvision, and mishearing, based on her own experiences abroad.

In 2021, she won the Forbes Asia 30 UNDER 30 award, as well as PRESTIGE Hong Kong's Artist to Watch 2024 and the best artist prize at Art Karlsruhe,Germany, and has received numerous awards, including a work purchased and permanently stored by the Karlsruhe Museum of Art.

In 2024, her work was exhibited at the Miss Dior Exhibition held at the Roppongi Museum, and was added to DIOR's collection.

The new works created for the museum's opening exhibition explore themes ranging from miscommunication to human connections, physicality, dance, and music, and will allow visitors to encounter the artist's true essence.

Egami says, "Lines are not only connecting us but also dividing us. The essence of Oriental painting is lines. When miscommunication and lifelines take on rhythm, breathing, and physicality, I hear music. It becomes the resonance of the earth."

OAR Contemporary Art Museum <ETSU EGAMI: Echoes of the Earth>

The exhibition will feature a dynamic exhibit including three large-scale works measuring nearly 6 meters that embody the relationship between calligraphy and music that Egami Etsuko felt, as well as portraits of international singers, and will introduce a number of colorful works that will immerse you in Egami's worldview.

The exhibition catalogue will also include texts by Mael Bellec, curator of the Musée Cernuschi in Paris, and Tatehata Akira, director of the Saitama Prefectural Museum of Modern Art.

The curatorial team who planned the opening exhibition and Director Kim Mun-ho said, "We wanted to present the direction of the museum's identity to visitors and provide a special experience by focusing on the works in our collection."

During the solo exhibition, the museum is also hosting a parallel exhibition, "OAR Collection," and an exhibition by Moon Kyung-won and Jeong Jun-ho.

The OAR Museum was built on the grounds of Nosedong Tomb Park in Gyeongju, with two floors above ground and one below, and a total floor area of 1,594.06㎡, and was designed by architect Yoo Hyun-jun. As a new art landmark where visitors can encounter global contemporary art in Gyeongju, it is expected to bring new vitality to the development of local culture and art and to the tourism industry in Gyeongju.

Etsu Egami is the youngest artist to receive the FORBES ASIA 30 Under 30 Who Are Changing the World Award.

Exhibited at the VOCA exhibition in 2020, and was dispatched to New York as an emerging artist by the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2021.

Received the BEST ARTIST PRIZE in 2023. Selected along with Yuzuru Hanyu and Naomi Osaka as one of the "Asia Pacific U30 Outstanding Young Leaders 2024", and his work is included in the DIOR collection.

This year, she won the top prize at Art Karlsruhe in Germany, and her work was purchased and added to the collection of the Karlsruhe State Museum of Art. Her work is currently on display at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.

【ETSU EGAMI Major collection】

DIOR (France), State Art Museum Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe), He Art Museum (Guangdong), WoodOne Museum (Hiroshima), IRIS ART MUSEUM (Suzhou), Garage Art Museum (Moscow), HUAWEI (Shenzhen), and more.