After the Meta-Vox dissolution exhibition in 1989, I felt that a more fundamental issue within Korean art had to be confronted—the superficial borrowing of Western art and the resulting consolidation of a dependent structure. To address this in another way, I persuaded fellow artists and theorists of my generation to establish the Association of Post-Art Artists and founded the Bukak Youth Art Academy for systematic theoretical study.

 

We invited scholars whose books were attracting attention at the time and organized lectures every Saturday. The seats were always filled. In the Korean art scene of that period, even terminology was often confused through blind imitation, making meaningful discussion difficult. Fragmentary imports of postmodernist discourse sometimes deepened the confusion rather than clarifying it. In that context the academy functioned as a kind of “coordinate system” for young artists.The program ran for two years across four semesters.

 

We planned to publish a full series of lecture transcripts, but financial limitations allowed only two volumes to appear:Korean Contemporary Art and Modernism (1991) andKorean Contemporary Art and Postmodernism (1992).What ultimately prevented continuation was not only financial difficulty but also a persistent suspicion toward any form of collective initiative. Even organizing a learning platform could easily be interpreted as an attempt at forming another faction. Within such a structure the academy could produce results but could not remain institutionalized for long.