Marking
its eighth edition this year, Korea Artist Prize has been co-organized
by MMCA and the SBS Foundation since 2012 as a way of discovering and
supporting artists who exemplify the potential and creative capabilities of
contemporary Korean art. As one of Korea’s representative honors in the arts,
it has served over the years to create new directions and discourses and
suggest new visions for contemporary art.
For
Korea Artist Prize 2019, a
panel of Korean and overseas art experts Ayoung Kim, Hyesoo Park, Jewyo Rhii,
and Young In Hong last March as participating artists. All of them are artists
who have drawn attention from the Korean and overseas art worlds for work
boasting experimental forms and themes—including video, installation, media,
performance, and site-specific pieces—rather than work in traditional media
such as painting or sculpture. Over 20 new works in all are to be shown for the
first time in the exhibition.
Each
of the artists takes a different perspective in addressing issues related to
individuals and society within Korea, as well as various issues happening
around the world. The exhibition will also include various associated programs
by participating artists, including performances, discussions, surveys, shows,
and online feeds from the exhibition venue. In addition to broadening the
content and boundaries of the artwork, this approach will offer visitors the
opportunity to experience contemporary art in a three-dimensional way.
In
her recent work, Ayoung Kim has shown her interest in and explorations
of the migrations, transfers, crossings, supranationality, and locality taking
place at a global level. Central among her recent pieces is Porosity Valley:
Tricksters’ Plot (2019), a follow-up to her 2017 video work Porosity
Valley: Portable Holes. Focusing on Asia as a region and Mongolia in
particular, she combines her artist interests with Mongolian folklore,
exemplified by its beliefs concerning rocks and the land. As she juxtaposes
stories from geology with the migration process and way of life for Yemeni
refugees on Jeju Island—which has emerged as a recent issue in South Korea—she
addresses the journey of migration in a multi-layered approach. In so doing,
the artist raises new questions that cut across the areas of history and the
present.
Hyesoo
Park’s artwork starts from the question,
“Who is your ‘we’?” In the past, her work has consistently focused on
visualizing the values regarded as a “collective unconscious” or “universal
consciousness” within our society. For her latest work, she has conducted a
survey titled “Who Is Your ‘We’?” in order to address our individual
perceptions of “us.” After forming a sample group, the artist collaborated with
an expert to conduct a survey and study, which she then visualized in the form
of texts, videos, structures, diagrams, and installation. A Forum Theater ‘URI’
program also takes place in variable discussion settings within the museum. In
these activities, viewers become part of the artwork, taking place more
actively in the exhibition and the art. With her Perfect Family, No
Middle Ground, and various other works, Park also confronts phenomena and
issues that are rapidly arising in South Korean society, including the
disintegration of the family, social polarization, and dying alone.
In
her artwork, Jewyo Rhii uses variable combinations of everyday materials
to attach meaning and value to things that exist in society and its margins.
For this exhibition, she presents Love Your Depot, a model for a storage
system that the artist actually hopes to create in the future. Through an
artwork storage unit, lab (broadcasting station, media lab, and five-story
tower), and Team Depot(the Content Institute group), the works of art stored in
the exhibition setting are studied in various ways throughout the exhibition,
while different content produced on site is transmitted online. What the artist
has conceived is a creative concept that defers an artwork’s “obsolescence” and
prolongs its life as through a new kind of space that serves as both an artwork
storage site and a setting for creation and performance.
Young
In Hong applies the concept of
“equality” to artwork in a range of media including performance, drawing,
embroidery, and sound. Her latest work focuses on a different approach to
communication amid circumstances of extreme nationalism and social inequality
that are unfolding around the world. Based on her investigations of animals
with means of communication that are totally different from those of human
beings—birds in particular—she presents a three-part work under the title Sadang
B. To Paint the Portrait of a Bird is a large installation with
sound that transposes the inside and outside of a large bird cage structure in
the exhibition venue, effectively reversing the positions of viewer and bird.
The only thing that travels in this dichotomous setting is the calling of
birds, which forms a constant linkage between the two spaces. Un-Splitting,
a performance stages outside the gallery, adopts a motif drawn from observing
animals and gestures derived from women’s low-waged labor.
Following
a final review, the Korea Artist Prize 2019 honoree is to be
announced on Thursday, November 28. The final awardee will be named Artist
of the Year for 2019 and receive additional prize money of KRW 10 million. A
contemporary art documentary focusing on the supported artists’ and final
honoree’s artistic visions will also be produced and shown on SBS and cable
television.
