The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA; Director Kim Sunghee), in collaboration with the SBS Foundation, has selected four artists—Lee Hai Min Sun, Hong Jin-hwon, Lee Jungwoo, and Jeon Hyunsun—as the sponsored artists for 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》.
 
The four artists selected as sponsored artists for 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》 work across a range of media, including painting, video, photography, and sculpture, while collectively demonstrating contemporary sensibilities and the potential for artistic expansion.

Lee Hai Min Sun discovers the vulnerable existence of individuals within the states of objects that endure their environments in everyday life, observing their modes of being. Through various approaches, she has explored the ways in which the condition of objects and the concepts embedded within them can correspond to painterly action.
 
This exhibition extends her ongoing exploration of the conditions of existence through objects. It addresses unstable beings that seem as though they may easily disappear, yet persist at the margins with minimal physical presence, striving to endure through traces of time and the sensory qualities of materials.
 
Hong Jin-hwon observes and engages with the power dynamics surrounding photography and images. He primarily works with media such as photography, film, and web programming, seeking to uncover the sources of images’ contemporary power and, through this practice, to disrupt a world governed by inertia.
 
In a world where the real and the virtual overlap, he traces the process by which the time and space of a rally itself become an image, and he questions what movements and struggles bring to an end and what they defer in an era that does not share an imminent revolution.

Lee Jungwoo focuses on reading the data and conditions involved in the process of producing outcomes through the malfunction of technological systems. His new work captures, in formative language, the singularities discovered by inputting lost historical archives into generative AI.
 
Defining the invisible forces that steer outcomes—such as platform policies, data bias, and statistical skew—as “gravity,” he visualizes through video the contemporary conditions under which technological media reconstruct the past.
 
Jeon Hyunsun explores the ways in which images form relationships with space, primarily through painting. Moving across pointillist painting, installation, video, and sculpture, she focuses on the temporality, materiality, and potential for expansion inherent in two-dimensional images.
 
Her new work presents painting as a type of visual rock climbing wall, revealing within space the processes by which images are decomposed and layered. As viewers move between different media, they encounter multiple image pathways that do not converge into a single meaning.

The judging committee for the “Korea Artist Prize” is freshly formed each year to reflect diverse perspectives amid the rapidly changing domestic and international art environment, and to enhance international understanding of and interest in Korean art.
 
To this end, new international jurors are included annually. The first-round judging committee for 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》 is composed of seven members: Emma Enderby, Director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Charmaine Toh, Senior Curator at Tate Modern, London; Ho Tzu Nyen, an internationally renowned artist and Artistic Director of the 16th Gwangju Biennale (2026); Jung Hyun, art critic and Professor at Inha University; Kim Jiyon, Director of the alternative space d/p; Kim Sunghee, Director of the MMCA (ex officio); and Park Deoksun, curator at the MMCA (ex officio).
 
Following the first round of evaluation, the final jury will consist of six members, excluding the curator in charge. The final recipient of the prize will be announced in October after the opening of the exhibition, following a public Artist & Jurors Talk and the final round of deliberation.
 
The exhibition will run from Friday, 24 July to Sunday, 6 December 2026, at MMCA Seoul. Newly conceived and proposed works by the artists will be presented alongside earlier works from their respective artistic trajectories, offering a rich overview of each artist’s practice.

References

• 국립현대미술관 보도자료 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) Press Release)