From left are 4 finalists chosen for Korea Artist Prize 2026: Lee Hai Min Solar, Lee Jung-woo, Jeon Hyun-sun and Hong Jin-hwon. Courtesy of MMCA
The Nationwide Museum of Fashionable and Modern Artwork, Korea (MMCA) has unveiled the 4 finalists for this yr’s Korea Artist Prize: Lee Hai Min Solar, Hong Jin-hwon, Lee Jung-woo and Jeon Hyun-sun.
Established in 2012, the annual prize, co-organized by the MMCA and the SBS Basis, has championed promising and mid-career creatives who supply new views on modern Korean artwork. Annually, 4 people or collectives are short-listed, with every finalist receiving 50 million gained ($34,000) to develop new works for a devoted exhibition.
By means of portray, Lee Hai Min Solar appears to be like carefully at on a regular basis objects and reads in them the delicate presence of people. Her canvases dwell on figures and types that appear to be on the verge of disappearance but persistently stay on the margins.
Hong is drawn to “intervening” within the energy relations embedded in photos. Working with images, movie and internet programming, he tracks how scenes of protests and public gatherings are flattened into photos.
Lee Jung-woo turns to glitches inside technological programs. In his newest work, he feeds fragments of misplaced historic archives into generative synthetic intelligence, revealing how know-how reconstructs or distorts the previous.
Jeon investigates how two-dimensional work behave as soon as they enter an area. Her new work is offered like a climbing floor, with photos damaged into sections that overlap and reassemble.
This yr’s jury includes Emma Enderby, director of Berlin’s KW Institute for Modern Artwork; Charmaine Toh, senior curator at Tate; Ho Tzu Nyen, inventive director of the sixteenth Gwangju Biennale; artwork critic Jung Hyun; Kim Ji-yeon, director of the choice house D/P; MMCA Director Kim Sung-hee; and MMCA Curator Park Deok-sun.
The exhibition, “Korea Artist Prize 2026,” is slated to run from July 24 to Dec. 6. The ultimate winner shall be introduced in October and obtain a further 10 million gained in prize cash.
