This 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?

Today, the term “post-contemporary” is more often invoked as a convenient label for an indeterminate state following contemporary art than as a concept grounded in theoretical consensus or a coherent analytical framework. It frequently functions as a provisional marker—used to gesture toward new tendencies, generations, or changes that have yet to be clearly defined—rather than as a concept capable of explaining concrete conditions of operation or criteria of judgment.
 
As a result, “post-contemporary” tends to circulate either as a vague signifier of the future or as yet another stylistic category, without leading to a sustained analysis of how the foundational assumptions of contemporary art have actually been transformed. For this reason, this series does not begin by declaring or defining the post-contemporary. Instead, it begins by examining what kinds of outcomes the underlying conditions of contemporary art have in fact produced.
 

 
Contemporary Art as a Cognitive System
 
Contemporary art has never simply meant “art produced in the present.” It functioned as a cognitive system and as an institutional consensus. It was grounded in the shared assumption that the world is interpretable, that critique is effective, and that meaning can be continuously produced. Within this framework, the artwork remained a central unit of analysis. 

Criticism and institutions operated as mechanisms that adjusted and accumulated meaning, while judgments of value were understood not as fixed conclusions but as open processes accessible to multiple interpretations. This system was sustained by three core operative principles: the suspension of judgment, relationality, and institutional critique. The ‘suspension of judgment’ served as a safeguard against the violence of hierarchical evaluation based on a single criterion.

‘Relationality’ functioned as an analytical framework for reading artworks within social, institutional, and discursive contexts. Institutional critique aimed to expose and render modifiable the power structures and norms embedded in art institutions. For a time, these principles constituted some of the most effective aesthetic and critical tools for interpreting the world.
 
 
 
From the Suspension of Judgment to Structural Evasion
 
Over time, however, these principles began to produce consequences that were not originally intended. Here, the suspension of judgment does not simply refer to a postponement of evaluation. It describes a condition in which exhibitions and artworks refrain from explicitly articulating what their objectives were, whether those objectives were achieved, and what constituted failure.
 
In this sense, the suspension of judgment no longer operates as a flexible strategy but has hardened into a structural deferral of value judgment. Within this structure, exhibitions continue to proliferate, yet the extent to which their stated agendas are tested through selection, exhibition design, and audience experience fails to accumulate as evaluative knowledge.

Failures are not analyzed, limitations are not corrected,
and judgments do not persist as criteria for subsequent exhibitions.
 
What once functioned as an openness to interpretation has thus transformed 
into a mechanism that prevents judgment and responsibility from taking place at all.

Relationality and the Eclipse of the Artwork’s Intrinsic Value
 
‘Relationality’, too, has undergone a significant distortion. Originally conceived as a means of analyzing artworks within their social and institutional contexts, relationality gradually shifted its function within exhibition practices that repeated the same formats over time. Rather than serving as a tool for critical evaluation, relational discourse increasingly became a neutral language of explanation and justification.
 
The mere presence of relations, participation, or contextual references began to stand in for the artwork’s own achievements. As a result, discussions of completion, form, density, structure, and skill—core components of artistic evaluation—were displaced from the center of criticism, replaced by concerns that were increasingly peripheral to the work itself.

The artwork ceased to function as an object of evaluation
and instead became a case, an event trigger, or a vehicle for activating discourse.
 
While relational networks expanded, the language capable of 
analyzing and judging the artwork itself steadily weakened.

The Institutionalization of Critique and the Erasure of Responsibility
 
Institutional critique has likewise undergone a decisive shift. Initially, it functioned as an aesthetic practice capable of exposing and challenging the power structures of museums, biennials, markets, and discursive systems. Yet as institutional critique became a standardized component of exhibitions, it gradually stabilized into a predictable role performed within the authority of the very institutions it once sought to unsettle.
 
In this condition, critique continues to legitimize exhibitions rhetorically, but it rarely reaches the point at which institutional responsibilities, decision-making structures, or evaluative criteria are meaningfully altered. Questions of who is responsible for curatorial decisions, on what grounds selections were made, and why certain judgments succeeded or failed remain largely unarticulated.

Critique is repeated within institutional frameworks,
while responsibility is diffused, minimized, or rendered invisible.

Reconsidering “Already Legitimated Rules”
 
For a long time, contemporary art has operated on an implicit assumption: that exhibitions take place within already validated institutions, and that the rules governing those institutions have secured sufficient legitimacy to be trusted and followed by participants and audiences alike.
 
It is precisely this assumption that now requires fundamental reconsideration. As long as the rules, formats, and evaluative procedures of exhibitions are presumed to be inherently legitimate, the actual outcomes they produce—and the failures they generate—remain largely unquestioned.
 
The problem is not the existence of rules per se, but the lack of sustained inquiry into whether those rules remain effective, what consequences they generate, and whether they are open to revision.
 
 

The Conditions of the Post-Contemporary
 
This constellation—where judgment is structurally deferred, relationality functions as justification, institutional critique becomes institutionalized, and circuits of responsibility and revision fail to operate—is what this text refers to as the conditions of the post-contemporary.
 
These conditions do not describe a future stage yet to arrive. They name a structural situation that is already in operation but insufficiently recognized. Nor is this condition limited to specific regions or non-Western contexts; it characterizes contemporary art on a global scale.
 
 
 
The Position of Korean Contemporary Art
 
Korean contemporary art is among the fields that have experienced these conditions in a particularly condensed form. Having rapidly internalized international languages and institutional formats, Korean art is no longer situated primarily as a respondent to Western discourse.

The question must therefore be inverted:
Who is now capable of articulating these conditions with the greatest precision?

This shift in perspective does not arise from a sense of lack, but from the necessity of repositioning toward the future. Only those who have passed through these conditions can reflect upon them critically.
 
 
 
Structure and Purpose of the Series
 
This series consists of three parts, each examining the operative conditions of contemporary art and the points at which those conditions have lost their effectiveness. The aim is not to propose new theoretical solutions, but to clarify the consequences produced by the judgmental and institutional structures that contemporary art has long taken for granted.
 
 
Part 1 examines how the suspension of judgment, once intended as a critical strategy, became fixed through repetition and transformed into structural evasion.
 
 
Part 2 analyzes the post-discursive condition in which value judgments are increasingly replaced by capital, visibility, networks, and narrative connectivity.
 
 
Part 3 considers the position of Korean contemporary art within these conditions, exploring how it might move from the role of discursive respondent to that of a point of conceptual departure.
 
 
 
Moving Forward
 
The objective of this series is not to provide answers. The challenges facing contemporary art cannot be resolved through new declarations or fashionable concepts. What is required first is a clear recognition of what no longer functions: how judgment has been deferred, how critique has been neutralized, and how responsibility has been obscured.
 
Accordingly, this series seeks to establish a theoretical foundation through which Korean contemporary art can move beyond mere participation in global contemporary discourse and instead become a site for analyzing and questioning the conditions that shape it. In this sense, the project constitutes a necessary and unavoidable task for any serious discussion of the future of Korean contemporary art.
 
The future does not arrive through the declaration of new forms. It becomes possible only when existing conditions are recognized as no longer sufficient, and when those conditions themselves are transformed into objects of thought.

Jay Jongho Kim graduated from the Department of Art Theory at Hongik University and earned his master's degree in Art Planning from the same university. From 1996 to 2006, he worked as a curator at Gallery Seomi, planning director at CAIS Gallery, head of the curatorial research team at Art Center Nabi, director at Gallery Hyundai, and curator at Gana New York. From 2008 to 2017, he served as the executive director of Doosan Gallery Seoul & New York and Doosan Residency New York, introducing Korean contemporary artists to the local scene in New York. After returning to Korea in 2017, he worked as an art consultant, conducting art education, collection consulting, and various art projects. In 2021, he founded A Project Company and is currently running the platforms K-ARTNOW.COM and K-ARTIST.COM, which aim to promote Korean contemporary art on the global stage.