In 1977, 200 000 children were adopted from South Korea. Florian Bong-Kil Grosse was one of those children. The following year, he landed in Germany the following year on the 25 March in a KLM plane.
Thirsty years went by before he saw the land of my birth again, and he can still clearly remember my first impressions as well as the questions and expectations that travelled with me, these to a certain extent unarticulated.
Hanguk is less the documentation of a country and its inhabitants, rather, a pictorial description of a place that belongs to wholly personal imagination. It is the attempt to bring the images of external reality into agreement with those of inner reality. What Grosse found in Korea is much more a sense of the alien and yet strangely familiar.
About the Artist
Born in Daegu, Korea, Florian Bong-Kil Grosse was flown to Germany after being adopted. Grosse studied Korean Studies in Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Communication-Design in FT- Dortmund.
He is currently an artist and freelance photographer based in Berlin, Germany. Grosse has exhibited in various galleries such as Daegu Art Factory, Space 291 Seoul and Think Tank Gallery. In 2015 Grosse self-published Hanguk.
IN OTHER IMAGE, WHEN WORDS FAIL
International Portfolio Showcase
National Library Plaza
05 Oct—30 Oct
Free admission
