Left: Hayoun Kwon, Right: Junguk Yang ©MMCAThe National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) has selected Hayoun Kwon, Junguk Yang, Jiyoung Yoon, and Jane Jin Kaisen as the four sponsored artists for the “Korea Artist Prize 2024,” an exhibition and award program co-organized by MMCA and the SBS Foundation.
“Korea Artist Prize 2024” is the second edition of the renewed annual exhibition, which updated its review system in 2022 in celebration of its 10th anniversary. The new exhibition format offers a comprehensive view of the sponsored artists’ previous and latest works alongside the open discussion session Artist Juror Talks both enrich critique and affirm its impact as an award system representative of Korean contemporary art.
The four finalists featured in this year’s exhibition are active both in Korea and abroad and work with diverse media, including sculpture, installation, video, and virtual reality (VR). Hayoun Kwon produces VR works that offer experiences of spaces in personal memories, experimenting with the latest technologies applied to 3D animations, documentaries, and virtual realities. The spaces in personal memories that transcend the constraints of reality to unfold before the viewers simultaneously reconstruct history and test the boundary between reality and virtuality.
Junguk Yang examines the daily lives of ordinary people, such as an apartment security guard, an office worker, and the head of a household to visualize their stories through kinetic sculptures. The analog movements created by sculptures composed of wood, thread, and lightbulbs trigger imagination in the viewers as they elaborate on the stories of everyday neighbors.
Left: Jiyoung Yoon, Right: Jane Jin Kaisen ©MMCAJiyoung Yoon uses her sculptural language to produce works that expose the operative structures of sacrifice and faith underlying the society. Created by intricately manipulating each object’s physical and structural properties and semantics, Yoon’s sculptural situations allegorize the structure of social psychology.
A Korean-born artist based in Korea and Denmark, Jane Jin Kaisen was born in Jeju Island and adopted by a family in Denmark. Based on extensive research on Jeju Island’s history and cultural heritage, Kaisen has delved into the issues of memory, migration, borders, and translation. Her video works, which integrate poetic language with elements of performance and documentary, traverse the boundary between private and public memories to spark sociocultural and geopolitical conversations.
A total of seven judges took part in the preliminary review for “Korea Artist Prize 2024”: Charl Landvreugd, head of research and curatorial practice at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Cosmin Costinaş, artistic director of the 24th Biennale of Sydney; Ruba Katrib, Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at MoMA PS1; Seong Eun Kim, former director of the Nam June Paik Art Center; Haeju Kim, senior curator at Singapore Art Museum; Kim Sunghee, director of MMCA (ex-officio member); and Jooyeon Lee, the MMCA curator in charge of the exhibition (ex-officio member). All judges, excluding the curator in charge of the exhibition, will proceed to the final review after the opening of the exhibition and Artist Juror Talks to select one final winner.
Taking place in Galleries 1 and 2 of MMCA Seoul between Friday, 25 October 2024, and Sunday, 23 March 2025, this year’s exhibition is to feature a combination of the artists’ newly conceived and proposed works alongside related early works for a theoretic display of their artistic universes. Those interested in the open discussion session can participate by filling out an application on the MMCA website (detailed schedule TBA). The final winner will be announced in February 2025.
Kim Sunghee, director of the MMCA, notes, “As Korea’s representative award system intended to demonstrate Korean art’s potential to the world, this year’s “Korea Artist Prize” exhibition features four select artists, each of whom works with a different set of media and captures the artists’ in-depth study of their chosen media and unique themes. This exhibition is an opportunity for viewers to acquaint themselves in advance with the artists who will go on to represent Korean art.”
