Colonne Infinite di Park Eun Sun

On the occasion of the Year of Cultural Exchange between Italy and Korea 2024-2025, the heart of Rome hosts Colonne Infinite, the evocative widespread exhibition of contemporary art by the famous Korean artist Park Eun Sun.

Curated by Leonardo Contini, it takes place in three of the Eternal City's most iconic sites - the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo, Piazza Bocca della Verità and the Septizodium - where five monumental columns measuring 14 and 6 metres recall the sculptor's theme of 'infinity', ideally uniting the two countries in a mutual exploration of time, space and artistic evolution over the centuries.

Realised as a tribute to the 140th anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Italy and Korea, the exhibition path gives life to an extraordinary fusion of arts, histories and cultures, in which the refined polychrome marble and granite columns, placed at the vertices of an ideal triangle, are transformed from structural elements into majestic art objects. 

The Temple of Venus in the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo houses two artworks in red and black granite, which, in a 'poetics of absences', attract the eye to the place where the sacred building dedicated to the goddess once stood, symbolically extending its peristyle. In Piazza della Bocca della Verità, between the Temples of Hercules Victor and Portunus, a fourteen-metre work of art stands out in the Forum Boarium, dialoguing with the imposing Trajan and Aurelian columns, ideally taking the place of the column of Antoninus Pius, once located in the Campus Martius, whose remains were discovered in the eighteenth century. Another two columns of over six metres rise in the Septizodium, the monumental nymphaeum built by Septimius Severus at the foot of the Palatine Hill, right in front of the Circus Maximus, the extraordinary work of Roman engineering and today a symbolic place for Capitoline culture and events.

Colonne Infinite is organised by the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, the Korean Cultural Institute in Italy and the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE) in collaboration with the Colosseum Archaeological Park, the Municipality of Rome and the Contini Art Gallery.

Photo: Colonne Infinite by Park Eun Sun - photo credits Nicola Gnesi for Korean Cultural Institute