Korea Artist Prize 2016

Co-organizer: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea & SBS Foundation

The Korea Artist Prize is recognized not only as the flagship exhibition of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, but indeed as the most prestigious art award in Korea. Since 2012, the museum, in collaboration with the SBS Culture Foundation, has presented this award and the accompanying exhibition, continuing the tradition of the former Artist of the Year (1995–2010). Intended to support the most capable and creative artists in Korea, the Korea Artist Prize always draws tremendous interest from the art field and general public alike.

The selection process for this award began with the steering committee, which appointed eight recommenders and a team of judges from the art world. Each recommender nominated one artist (or team of artists) whose work showed outstanding quality and reflected various current trends. Next, after thoroughly reviewing the portfolios of the eight nominated artists and visiting their studios for an interview, the team of distinguished judges selected the four finalists who are participating in the exhibition: Kim Eull, Back Seung Woo, Ham Kyungah, and the team of mixrice (Cho Ji Eun and Yang Chul Mo). The four finalists will present their new works in Gallery 1 and 2 of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (Seoul). Finally, in October, the judges will conduct a second review based on the results of the exhibition, and announce the winner of the 2016 Korea Artist Prize. Visitors to Gallery 1 and 2 will surely be astonished to see the latest creations of these incredible artists. 

Gallery 1
In Gallery 1, Kim Eull has constructed a life-size two-story building that people can enter and explore. Blurring the boundary between the real and virtual, the interior of the building includes a replica of the artist's studio, allowing visitors to observe firsthand the process of artistic creation. Hence, the world of the artist collides with our own world in an explosion of thoughts and ideas, perhaps represented by the 1,300 glittering stars that are drawn in the gallery, forming a small galaxy.

Gallery 2
Installed in the open space of Gallery 2 is the works of Back Seung Woo, showing his diverse attempts to shatter the formal limitations and rigid interpretative frames of the medium of photography. By altering the brightness and color of certain parts of his photos from various locations, or rearranging the photos from their original order, Back recalibrates the audience's reception of the works, inspiring a wealth of new meanings and possibilities. 

Gallery 2 features the works of Ham Kyungah and mixrice, all of which deal with various forms of immigration, from the movement of people for their own survival to the differences between political, economic, social, and cultural systems. Famous for her embroidery works made by North Korean craftspeople, Ham Kyungah presents sculpture, installation, and performance on the themes of defecting and settling. Meanwhile, mixrice addresses the social phenomena of incessant movement, where people—especially migrant workers, who are invisible to Korean society—are forced to continually move because of their inability to secure a steady job, education, or income. To examine these issues, mixrice directly collaborated with different groups of immigrant workers to produce a variety of works (e.g. installations, murals, videos), including an installation made with dirt that was dug from an actual redeveloped neighborhood.

Press contact:
Bokyoung Hwang, Public Relations Team
T +82 2 2188 6239