The year 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of Nam June Paik (1932–2006). Long before the emergence of the World Wide Web, Paik envisioned a globally networked society. In 1974, he began conceptualizing Electronic Superhighway, anticipating the cultural and social transformations that digital networks would bring. As early as 1964, he introduced Robot K-456, bringing the relationship between humans and machines into the realm of artistic experimentation.
2026.01.27President Lee Jae-myung recently emphasized that “in the international society of the 21st century, culture is at the core of national prestige and national power,” adding that “even an additional supplementary budget should be arranged if necessary to restore and strengthen the foundations of culture and the arts.”
2026.01.20In recent years, Korean contemporary art has no longer remained on the periphery of the global art world. Korean artists are continuously invited to major biennials and international museums, and in terms of both form and subject matter, Korean contemporary art has increasingly demonstrated the ability to respond to global artistic standards.
2026.01.06The partnership between Frieze Seoul and Kiaf SEOUL has been extended for an additional five years. Approved with near-unanimous support at an extraordinary general meeting of the Galleries Association of Korea, the decision represents more than a simple contract renewal. It signals how the association—which oversees and operates Kiaf—currently understands and positions the structure of the art fair within Korea’s art ecosystem.
2025.12.23Bradford’s work is often packaged under the label of “social abstraction.” Yet this term directly contradicts the foundations of abstraction itself and functions more as a sanitized institutional rhetoric that half-erases its ethical and political implications.
2025.12.02In Korean contemporary art, the dominance of external theories is not simply a matter of imitation or personal preference. It results from a long-accumulated structure shaped by art education, institutional frameworks, and evaluation systems within the art market and public institutions.
2025.11.18Contemporary art is frequently discussed today through the language of crisis. This crisis is often framed as a loss of meaning: the claim that contemporary art has nothing new to say, that critique has become repetitive
2026.02.10The term “The Conditions of the Post-Contemporary” is not intended to declare the arrival of a new era. Rather, it functions as an analytical concept designed to bring the operative principles that contemporary art has established for itself back into the realm of critical reflection.
2026.01.27This text is not written to introduce or defend Korean contemporary art. Nor is it intended to declare a new movement or to predict future artistic forms. The point of departure for this series is a more fundamental question: Under what conditions has contemporary art operated, and are those conditions still valid today?
2026.01.13If modernism grounded art in formal innovation and historical progress, and postmodernism dismantled that narrative by foregrounding difference and the relativization of meaning, contemporary art today no longer functions as a framework capable of articulating new aesthetic principles or a coherent historical direction.
2025.12.30Today’s art market operates on a vast speculative structure camouflaged by the language of “investment.” Artworks are no longer read as products of emotion or thought; instead, they are interpreted as indicators of price volatility.
2025.12.09Today’s contemporary art scene has been rewritten in the language of capital. Artworks have become units of transaction rather than outcomes of thought, and the artist’s creative act is adjusted somewhere between private desire and market demand. The spiritual value of art—the inner form where human perception meets reflection—is gradually losing its ground.
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