《Kitsch & Pop: Korean Pop Art Now》 is an exhibition that re-examines the formation and development of Korean Pop Art through the lens of contemporary art.
 
Organized by the Seoul Museum of Art and presented at the Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong, the exhibition runs from October 2 to November 22, 2025, at PMQ Block B in Central, Hong Kong. Following its first presentation at the Korean Cultural Center in Shanghai, this touring exhibition explores how Korean Pop Art has evolved and expanded amid changing social and cultural conditions.

At a time when K-pop and K-culture have become global cultural phenomena, the exhibition asks what the notion of “Pop” has meant within the history of Korean art—beyond its surface as a genre or style—and how it continues to embody contemporary sensibilities.
 
Korean Pop Art is not a mere adaptation of Western Pop but an aesthetic trajectory that has taken shape between mass culture and fine art, revealing a distinct rhythm and emotional tone rooted in Korean experience.《Kitsch & Pop》revisits that trajectory, tracing how the language of Pop has been transformed and reinterpreted within Korean reality.
 
The exhibition unfolds around two key concepts: “Individualized Pop” and “Cool-Kitsch.”

“Individualized Pop” reflects a shift from the appropriation of mass-produced images and symbols to more personal, introspective expressions of Pop sensibility—where individual identity, emotion, and social context are embedded in the work.
 
“Cool-Kitsch,” on the other hand, captures the aesthetics of excess color, affect, and digital perception that characterize today’s visual culture. Drawing from the rapid circulation of images across social media and new media platforms, this idea points to a contemporary sensibility that merges irony with sincerity.

Together, these two frameworks highlight Korean Pop Art as an evolving practice—fluid, responsive, and continually expanding rather than fixed or formulaic.

The participating artists are Hong Kyoungtack, Noh Sangho, Don Sunpil, Son Donghyun, Park Mina, Kim Shinhye, Sim Raejung, Woo Jungsoo, Chu Mirim, and Ryu Sungsil, ten in total. Working across painting, installation, drawing, and video, they present a multifaceted landscape of Korean Pop Art.
 
Hong Kyoungtack is a leading figure in Korean Pop painting who combines popular imagery, comic-like forms, and vivid color to build a contemporary vocabulary for Korean painting. His works distort everyday objects and figures with bold rhythm and emotion, expanding the expressive potential of painting itself.
 
Noh Sangho translates SNS images, online memes, and the visual language of digital screens into painterly form. By transposing fragments of the internet into the tactile ‘language of the hand,’ he redefines Pop painting for the digital age.
 
Don Sunpil deconstructs and recomposes urban scenes and consumer imagery, exposing the psychological dimensions of living in a visually saturated society. By twisting traces of advertisements and brand logos, he transforms them into paintings of ‘urban emotion.’
 
Son Donghyun adopts the brushwork and motifs of traditional Korean painting to portray contemporary icons—celebrities, politicians, and comic characters—juxtaposing historical and modern visual systems. His practice has been described as a ‘Joseon-style Pop’ or a ‘kitschification of tradition,’ establishing a distinct hybrid domain.
 
Park Mina employs repetition and formal simplicity to express what she calls ‘impersonal emotion.’ Through the arrangement of everyday objects and color planes, she reveals subtle emotional layers beneath Pop’s polished surface, offering a uniquely Korean modulation of Pop’s cool precision.
 
Kim Shinhye visualizes emotional intensity through strong color fields and flat geometric structures, exploring the material and rhythmic qualities of painting as a core language of Pop. Her works convey both the tension and vitality of everyday life within sharp chromatic contrasts.
 
Sim Raejung merges photographic imagery with painting to explore the unease that arises at the boundary between reality and imagination. The blurred relationships between her figures and backgrounds expose the emotional voids embedded in Pop imagery.
 
Woo Jungsoo reconstructs fragments of everyday images and advertising codes through collage, revealing how the sensibility of mass culture can be dismantled within the logic of painting. His clean lines and planar compositions carry subtle traces of human sentiment beneath their structured surfaces.
 
Chu Mirim humorously addresses issues of gender, desire, and consumption using kitsch materials such as dolls, decorations, and glittering ornaments. Her works reinterpret feminine subjectivity through the performative and playful aesthetics of surface.
 
Ryu Sungsil combines performance, video, and installation to satirize the structures of desire in contemporary society. In her ‘Sung-sil Gallery’ series, she humorously blurs the boundaries between art and commerce, reality and fiction, establishing a unique and ironic stance within Pop’s expanded field.
 

Rather than presenting a definitive image of “Korean Pop Art,”《Kitsch & Pop》invites reflection on its evolving identity and open possibilities. The exhibition acknowledges that ‘Korean-ness’ cannot be defined by a single aesthetic or form, but is instead expressed through a multiplicity of perspectives and generations. Moving fluidly between Pop and Kitsch, art and mass culture, these artists articulate another visual language for what it means to create—and to see—"Korean art today”.
 
No longer a derivative of Western Pop, Korean Pop Art now exists as an independent and self-evolving language of sensibility within the global landscape.《Kitsch & Pop: Korean Pop Art Now》records and reinterprets that language through the lens of the present. It is not a conclusion but an unfolding narrative—an unfinished story that continues to write the next chapter of “Korean Pop.”