The four artists selected for 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》—Lee Hai Min Sun, Lee Jungwoo, Jeon Hyunsun, and Hong Jin-hwon—work across a wide range of media and methodologies, including painting, video, photography, and installation.

At first glance, it is difficult to place them within a single artistic tendency. Yet viewed together, their practices reveal several important currents shaping Korean contemporary art today. The official Korea Artist Prize platform uses these English spellings for the four artists.
 
All four have developed sustained lines of inquiry over many years, and none treats their chosen medium simply as a means of expression. Instead, they question how painting, photography, video, and artificial intelligence shape the ways reality is seen, recorded, and constructed, and how objects and environments are transformed over time.
 
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) notes that, despite the significant differences among their practices, the four artists share an interest in moving beyond representation itself to examine the structures and systems that shape our understanding of the world.

Lee Hai Min Sun considers traces of time accumulated in objects and environments; Lee Jungwoo investigates how technological systems and data construct reality and history; Jeon Hyunsun explores the relationship between painting and space; and Hong Jin-hwon addresses the social and political power embedded in images. (Korea Artist Prize)
 
These concerns are not confined to Korean art. AI and data, materiality and ecology, expanded painting, and the politics of images are all subjects of sustained discussion across contemporary art internationally. In this sense, 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》 offers an intriguing point from which to consider where Korean contemporary art intersects with broader developments in the global art world.
 
 
 
Lee Hai Min Sun: Vulnerability and the Time Embedded in Matter
 
Lee Hai Min Sun looks closely at objects and landscapes that are easily overlooked in everyday life. Temporary structures, plants, and materials that melt, break apart, or become deformed appear repeatedly in her work—things that seem neither stable nor complete.
 
Her interest, however, is not in faithfully representing such objects. Rather, she observes how objects endure their environments and how time accumulates upon them, translating these conditions into the languages of painting and installation.
 
In Lingering Snow (2026), presented in this exhibition, Lee begins with snow that remains after winter has passed. Rather than depicting the snow itself, she evokes its presence through the dust, stains, and traces of melting that surround it. Outside (2026) and Plant Erectus_The Mass (2026) similarly examine temporary conditions that persist longer than expected, as well as relationships between materials and beings that support one another in maintaining their form. These are the official English titles used in the English-language exhibition material. (Gallr)

Such work can be connected to ongoing discussions in international contemporary art concerning ecological sensibilities, materiality and environment, and relationships between human and non-human forms of existence. Serpentine’s long-term General Ecology research, for example, has examined consciousness and intelligence across species and beings, including plants, fungi, soil ecologies, and other more-than-human systems. (Serpentine Galleries)
 
What distinguishes Lee’s practice, however, is that she does not present these questions through grand ecological narratives or direct messages. Instead, she allows viewers to experience them slowly through painted surfaces, the passage of time, and subtle changes in the states of materials.
 
Her work is therefore better understood not by reducing it to regional labels such as “Korean lyricism,” but through the way it gives painterly form to broader contemporary concerns with materiality, vulnerability, survival, and persistence.
 
In the 2024 exhibition 《Nostalgics on realities》 at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul, Lee was presented as one of six artists making diverse contributions to Korea’s contemporary art scene. The exhibition also emphasized the participating artists’ engagement with natural, man-made, and digital environments and their rethinking of relationships among past, present, and possible futures. (Thaddaeus Ropac)
 
 
 
Lee Jungwoo: Looking at the Failures of AI Rather Than Its Possibilities
 
Lee Jungwoo’s practice has particularly direct points of contact with current international discussions surrounding AI, data, and machine vision.
 
He is less interested in moments when technological systems function as intended than in moments when they fail or behave unexpectedly. Through these apparent failures, he works backward to uncover the data, rules, and invisible biases that shape their outputs.
 
In Writing “Hurrah for Freedom”: Cinema and History (2025–2026) begins with the process of reconstructing, through generative AI, missing scenes from Hurrah for Freedom (1946), a film made shortly after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. The work asks how history and images are reconstructed when past forms of censorship and erasure encounter contemporary platform policies, content filtering, and data bias. The Korea Artist Prize’s official English material uses this title and frames the work around generative systems, historical absence, and the conditions under which the past is reconfigured in the present. (Korea Artist Prize)

When generative AI first emerged, much of the attention focused on how quickly and spectacularly it could produce new images. The debate has since expanded toward more fundamental questions: Whose data makes these images possible? What is included and what is excluded? And in what ways do algorithms standardize our understanding of the world?
 
Tate’s research project “Electronic Life: AI Communities and the Collection” similarly approaches AI not simply as a new production technology but through questions of contemporary art, digital tools, identity, representation, access, and community. (Tate)
 
Lee likewise focuses less on AI’s visual effects than on the omissions and biases embedded within technological systems. Particularly important is his decision to connect these issues not only to abstract questions of technological ethics but also to missing and censored records in modern Korean history.
 
The central question in his work is therefore not whether AI is being used, but what technology remembers, what it forgets, and how history is reconstructed in the process.
 
 
 
Jeon Hyunsun: How Far Can Painting Expand?
 
Jeon Hyunsun begins with painting, but her work does not end with a self-contained image hanging on a wall.
 
Images from her paintings migrate into sculpture and installation, while paintings themselves can become structures that organize the exhibition space. In Even Rabbits Dig a Second Burrow (2026), thirty large canvases are arranged in a structure reminiscent of a climbing wall, encouraging viewers to move through the space and construct relationships among the images for themselves. The official Korea Artist Prize page describes the work as presenting painting as a kind of “visual climbing wall.” (Korea Artist Prize)

This approach connects to an important shift in contemporary painting.
 
Painting remains a powerful medium in both the international art market and exhibition landscape, but its contemporary possibilities are no longer limited to the revival of the flat pictorial surface. Increasingly, artists explore how painting can relate to sculpture, installation, architecture, digital imagery, and the bodily experience of the viewer.
 
Jeon likewise expands painting from something to be looked at into something that organizes spatial experience. In her practice, “expanded painting” does not simply mean increasing scale or combining multiple media. What matters is how images are fragmented and reconnected in space, and how the viewer becomes involved in constructing those relationships.
 
Esther Schipper describes Jeon as having developed a distinctive pictorial language in which symbolic geometry, suggestive landscape, pixel-like forms, and a tension between artificial presence and poetic absence come together. (Esther Schipper)
 
In a digital environment where we constantly encounter fragmented images and assemble meaning from them, Jeon’s work offers one example of how the historically enduring medium of painting can be reactivated within the visual conditions of the present.
 
 
 
Hong Jin-hwon: Does Photography Record Reality, or Produce It?
 
Hong Jin-hwon has consistently examined the power relations surrounding photography and images. Working across photography, film, and web programming, his primary concern is not the technology of image production itself but the power that images acquire within society.
 
On his official website, Hong describes his practice in English as one that “explores and engages with the power dynamics surrounding photography and images.” (Hong Jin-hwon)
 
In this exhibition, he considers demonstrations and political struggle, light and darkness, and the relationship between visibility and invisibility, examining how political events are transformed into images and subsequently consumed.
 
The Highest Form of Image Is Armed Struggle (2026) juxtaposes a historical revolutionary declaration with contemporary protest culture, asking how political action has come to intersect with staging, cameras, and the structures of image production. The English-language exhibition material uses this title for the work. (Gallr)

Political events today no longer exist only at the site where they take place. They are photographed on smartphones and circulated through news media and social platforms, becoming reconstructed through countless images.
 
The question posed by photography has therefore expanded beyond “Is this image true?” It now includes who produces an image, which scenes are selected, what is repeatedly made visible, and what remains unseen.
 
MoMA’s 《New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging》 similarly approached photography as more than a documentary medium. The exhibition brought together practices that connect personal stories with broader political histories, reconsider archives, and examine intergenerational memory, community, and belonging. (The Museum of Modern Art)
 
Hong’s work begins with the specific realities of protest culture and political landscapes in Korea. Yet its questions are not confined to an account of Korean political history. The idea that images do not merely record reality but actively participate in constructing it has become relevant wherever social media and digital platforms shape everyday experience.
 
 
 
From Korean Realities to Global Questions
 
The four artists selected for 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》 work with different media and subjects, yet they share a fundamental concern: rather than simply representing reality, they ask how reality itself is constructed and perceived.
 
Technology and data, images and politics, painting and space, materiality and ecology are all central issues in contemporary art internationally. The significance of this selection therefore does not lie in demonstrating that Korean art is following global trends. More importantly, it lies in asking how globally shared questions can be reconsidered through Korea’s specific histories, societies, places, and experiences, and transformed through each artist’s own visual language.
 
Local experience is not something that must be erased in the name of international relevance. On the contrary, it acquires distinctive meaning when questions rooted in specific realities introduce new perspectives into existing global art discourses.
 
In this sense, 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》 does not propose a single answer to what Korean contemporary art is. Rather, it provides an important point of reference for understanding where Korean art currently intersects with the broader contemporary art world, and in what directions it may continue to develop.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information

Exhibition: 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》
Participating Artists: Lee Hai Min Sun, Lee Jungwoo, Jeon Hyunsun, Hong Jin-hwon
Dates: July 24–December 6, 2026
Venue: Galleries 1 and 2, MMCA Seoul
Co-organized by: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and SBS Foundation (Korea Artist Prize)
 
 
 
References
 
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》
Official exhibition information and institutional overview of the four selected artists and the exhibition’s broader focus. (Korea Artist Prize)
 
Korea Artist Prize, 《Korea Artist Prize 2026》
Official English-language platform for the 2026 exhibition, including artist names, curatorial framing, and artist materials. (Korea Artist Prize)
 
Korea Artist Prize, Lee Jungwoo
Official artist page and interview addressing generative AI, historical absence, algorithmic bias, and In Writing “Hurrah for Freedom”: Cinema and History. (Korea Artist Prize)
 
Korea Artist Prize, Jeon Hyunsun
Official artist page on Jeon’s practice and Even Rabbits Dig a Second Burrow. (Korea Artist Prize)
 
Tate, “Electronic Life: AI Communities and the Collection”
A research and public program examining AI through contemporary art, digital tools, community, identity, access, and representation. (Tate)
 
Serpentine, 《The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: The Understory of the Understory》
Part of Serpentine’s long-term General Ecology research, exploring ecological systems, interspecies relations, fungi, plants, soil, and more-than-human forms of existence. (Serpentine Galleries)
 
The Museum of Modern Art, 《New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging》
An exhibition examining relationships among photography, political histories, archives, memory, community, and belonging. (The Museum of Modern Art)
 
Esther Schipper, Jeon Hyunsun
Official gallery material on Jeon Hyunsun’s pictorial language and international exhibition practice. (Esther Schipper)
 
Thaddaeus Ropac, 《Nostalgics on realities》
Exhibition material situating Lee Hai Min Sun among six artists making diverse contributions to Korea’s contemporary art scene and examining relationships among reality, time, natural and constructed environments. (Thaddaeus Ropac)
 
Hong Jin-hwon, Official Website
Primary source for the artist’s own English description of his practice, exhibition history, and work across photography, film, and web programming. (Hong Jin-hwon)