Bronze Dreams: Joan Miró's 'Language of Sculpture' in Seoul
Creatrip Team
3 months ago
Thirteen late-period bronze sculptures by Catalan surrealist master Joan Miró (1893–1983) are on view at Tadeu Sopac Seoul in Hannam-dong through Feb 7. The exhibition focuses on Miró’s late sculptural language (assemblage) made between 1976–1982, when everyday objects—coat hangers, bamboo, shells, branches—collected around his Mallorca studio were arranged into unconscious, poetic forms and cast in bronze. Curators highlight Miró’s blend of tradition and innovation, noting that his most prolific bronze work came in his 70s. The show’s spatial design uses white hanji (traditional Korean paper) structures and framed small windows to incorporate light and negative space, drawing a conceptual parallel between Miró’s unconscious poetics and Korean literati (seonbi) aesthetics such as chagyeong (借景, “borrowing a view”). Large works like the 3-meter sculpture Woman and Bird (1982) echo Miró’s monumental Barcelona piece and illustrate the continuity of his motifs. The exhibition aims to invite viewers to find resonances between Miró’s world and Korean cultural sensibilities.
