According to the recently released 2024 Artist Status Survey, 75.7% of artists earn less than 12 million KRW annually, while 31% report having no income at all. The average household income of artists is over 20 million KRW lower than the national average, with severe income disparities particularly evident in photography, literature, and fine arts.
2025.03.11
The Korean art scene is experiencing what can truly be called a "blockbuster boom." One after another, exhibitions of internationally renowned artists—Van Gogh, Hopper, Munch, Basquiat—are being held in Korea, resembling the global tours of pop stars.
2025.02.25
Since the 2000s, the Korean art world and art market have undergone remarkable expansion, growing significantly in scale. This growth is reflected in the dramatic rise of the domestic art auction market over the past 24 years. According to research conducted by the Korea Art Price Appraisal Association (Chairman Kim Young-Seok) and Art Price (CEO Ko Yoon-Jeong), the market has expanded 1,830 times during this period.
2025.02.11
In the 21st century, South Korea has solidified its position as a global cultural powerhouse. K-pop dominates the global music industry, and K-dramas and K-literature have seamlessly entered people's daily lives worldwide, bridging popular culture and fine arts.
2024.12.17
In 2024, a massive financial scandal rocked the South Korean art market. An art trading company called GALLERY K attracted large sums of money by promising investors a 7-9% annualized return and guaranteed principal, but recently, a class-action lawsuit by customers has revealed the full story.
2024.11.19
Recently, the Korean art scene has been embroiled in a heated debate over the potential establishment of a branch of the iconic Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou (Pompidou Center) in Korea.
2024.10.22
The One & Only Place& limited access to news & exhibitions
“Who bought that piece?” This question often wields more power than the artwork’s intrinsic aesthetics or philosophy. In today’s art world, the collector is not merely a purchaser but a powerful actor who structures value and inscribes narrative.
2025.07.29
In the 21st century, late capitalism has evolved beyond an economy of production and consumption into a system where symbols and signs dominate value. Jean Baudrillard called this the “political economy of the sign,” where the symbolic meaning of things supersedes their material substance. In such a system, commodities are no longer just physical objects—they are bundles of signs, socially coded and ideologically charged.
2025.07.15
Fine art has always touched the deepest strata of the human spirit. It is not simply the skill of creating aesthetic objects, but the act of a living human being attempting to understand themselves. While humans have evolved by using tools, it is in writing poetry and painting images that they crossed from utility into the realm of the mind. Art was born at this very threshold, and it has defined civilization ever since.
2025.07.01
Public support was once the final bastion of art. It served as the only mechanism through which art could defend itself from the logic of the market—a space where the essence of artistic creation could be protected from the accelerating demands of capital.
2025.06.17
In today’s global art market, auctions and art fairs are no longer simply distribution channels or temporary festivities. Auctions reduce art to quantifiable numbers, while art fairs promote the rapid reproduction and immediate consumption of market-friendly works. Empowered by capital, these two forces now dictate not only the market’s direction but also the survival conditions of artists themselves.
2025.06.03
The Korean contemporary art scene today is enveloped in a profound silence—the absence of art criticism. Exhibitions abound, artworks circulate rapidly through the market, and artists are consumed at speed, but there is scarcely a voice that interprets, questions, or inscribes meaning into these movements.
2025.05.20
