SEOUL.- The Korea Artist Prize is a leading support and award program for contemporary Korean artists, co-organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the SBS Foundation since 2012. Each year, four artists (or artist teams) are selected to receive support for the production and exhibition of new work, making the prize an ongoing platform for collectively examining the major questions and currents shaping contemporary art.
The character “sang” in the title Korea Artist Prize (Olhae-ui Jakgasang) signifies the official recognition and public presentation of artistic practice. At the same time, this prize also calls to mind both the forms “hyeong-sang” created by art and the phenomena (“hyeon-sang”) of the age that art reveals. Artists render visible the realities and issues we confront, while capturing changes and movements that have yet to be fully articulated. In this sense, the Korea Artist Prize is not merely an institution that recognizes artistic achievement but also an occasion to consider what kind of world contemporary art brings to light—and where its gaze is directed.
The artists selected for Korea Artist Prize 2026 are Lee Hai Min Sun, Lee Jungwoo, Jeon Hyunsun, and Hong Jin-hwon. Lee Hai Min Sun, who has closely linked the materiality of objects and the concepts embedded within them to the practice of painting, turns her gaze toward objects and landscapes that seem as though they might easily disappear yet endure over time, translating the duration of their persistence into painting. Lee Jungwoo, meanwhile, traces the vestiges of errors, omissions, and biases generated by technological systems, exploring the conditions that make such outcomes possible. Jeon Hyunsun, who experiments with the structure and possibilities of painting, expands the medium into multi-layered forms, inviting viewers to make connections and experience the images for themselves. Hong Jin-hwon intervenes in the power relations surrounding images, posing fundamental questions about how sites of rallies and protests are transformed into images.
The four artists work in different media and employ distinct methodologies, yet all refuse to accept the world as a fixed order or a closed system. Their works are inhabited by things that remain without disappearing, things that linger without having been fully articulated, and things in the process of taking shape. This exhibition seeks to trace the layers of relationships that emerge at the intersection of these forms and signs. In the course of that process, each viewer will encounter a different kind of imagination (“sang-sang”). Rather than presenting definitive answers, Korea Artist Prize 2026 seeks to sustain an open-ended inquiry. Unexpected questions invariably lead us toward places we have yet to imagine—and toward imagining what has yet to arrive.
Artists: Lee Hai Min Sun, Lee Jungwoo, Jeon Hyunsun, Hong Jin-hwon.
Curated by Park Deoksun / Curatorial Assistant Oh Yoonjung.
Korea Artist Prize 2026 jury
Ho Tzu Nyen, Artistic Director, the 16th Gwangju Biennale; Media Artist; Film Director / Charmaine Toh, Senior Curator, International Art, Tate / Emma Enderby, Director, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin / Jung Hyun, Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Inha University; Art Critic / Kim Jiyon, Director, d/p; Director, Sohwansa / Kim Sunghee, Director, MMCA (Ex officio member) / Park Deoksun, Curator, MMCA (Ex officio member).
