The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) presents the “Korea Artist Prize 2024”, until March 23, 2025, as an event co-organized with the SBS Foundation.

Since its establishment in 2012, the “Korea Artist Prize” has established itself as the premier award system in Korean art. In keeping with institutional improvements realized on the system’s 10th anniversary last year.

“Korea Artist Prize 2024” will be providing condensed glimpses of each finalist artist’s body of work by exhibiting older works alongside newer ones that reflect recent critical perspectives, while elevating the public’s understanding through artist/judges dialogues to be made public on and offline in early 2025.

The artists receiving support through this event— Hayoun Kwon, Yang Jung-uk, Jiyoung Yoon, and Jane Jin Kaisen—offer diverse and fresh perspectives on the contemporary era, drawing on interests in psychological dynamics, everyday lives, historical memory, myth, and ritual.

Hayoun Kwon creates a new experience of memories by enlisting virtual reality (VR) technology to reexamine the concepts of memory and recording. In addition to three older works that illustrate the artist’s critical perspective on recording and memory in different ways, the exhibition also shares her new work.

Yang Jung-uk presents moving sculptures and stories that originate in moments captured from everyday life, expressing an image of the life that he aspires to. His contributions to the exhibition consist of works that focus on individuals and landscapes, showing the meaning of life expressed in actions that are endlessly repeated by people in a place between hardship and hope.

Jiyoung Yoon is an artist who makes use of sculpture’s nature as a medium with both inner and outer aspects, visualizing the attitudes that individuals acquire due to external incidents and circumstances, along with their efforts to achieve a “better” state.

The exhibition presents various older works that illustrate Yoon’s experiments with the sculpture medium, as well as newer works.

Jane Jin Kaisen is well known for her poetic, performative video works, which boast a powerful visual impact. For this exhibition, she presents Ieodo (Island Beyond the Sea) (2024), a series of seven video works, including three new creations.

This exhibition marks the first time the entire series is being presented, providing a comprehensive view of the artist’s multifaceted research, which is grounded in long-term collaboration with local communities.

The final winner of the “Korea Artist Prize 2024” will be named in February 2025 following a public talk program and second round screening on the artworks that will take place with both Korean and overseas panel members during the exhibition. Visitors will be able to attend this public talk between artists and judges, and the proceedings will also be presented online afterward.

The finalist named as winner of the ‘Korea Artist Prize 2024’ will receive an additional KRW 10 million in support. A documentary spotlighting the artworks of all four supported artists and the winning finalist will be aired on the SBS network and cable channels.

“Korea Artist Prize 2024”
2024.10.25 - 2025.03.23
10:00 am - 6:00 pm (Wed, Sat 10:00 am – 9:00 pm)
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul
30, Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea

Ji Yeon Lee has been working as an editor for the media art and culture channel AliceOn since 2021 and worked as an exhibition coordinator at samuso (now Space for Contemporary Art) from 2021 to 2023.