About Artists

1. Jheon Soo-Cheon – Artist of the Year 1995

From the late 1980s until now, his works has spanned from hermit crabs, to planets, and recently to tou (small clay figure), yet his main concern is the human being all the time his art is encapsulated to the condition of human existentialism which is a universal human question.
<Song Mi-Sook, "On Human Existence in the Material Civilization", Monthly Art, April 1995>

2. Yoon Jeong-Seop – Artist of the Year 1996

The exhibition comprises of the two installation works: Time, Space, Echo out of everybody, everybody is washing and Yoon Jeong-Seop Documenta human oriented time and space. Yoon Jeong-Seop represents the reality that is seen, felt, responded to and experienced within time and space that is both real and imaginary. It cannot be overlooked that this imagined space has been produced through direction, and also that its starting point was the real world.
<Im Young-Bang, "Reality of the Situation Directed from the Real", Yoon Jeong-Seop, 1996>

3. Whang In-Kie – Artist of the Year 1997

The exhibition of Whang In-Kie who was nominated as Artist of the Year at the National Museum of Contemporary Art refers to what is lately discussed as the matter of accommodation. It is because he succeeds in grafting Western painting into Eastern painting, the modern technique into the Eastern traditional spirit. In this way, his work provides a clue to dissolve the stubbornly lodged dichotomy between the East and West, and between the traditional and modern.
<Kim Hong-Hee, "Engrafting of Traditional Korean Painting upon Modern Figurative Rule", Monthly Art, January 1998>

4. Kwon, Young-Woo – Artist of the Year 1998

Until now, the exhibition for Artist of the Year was the celebration of the 40s it is now time an elderly artist in his 70s to present the ageless creative strength and mentality in its fullness. Although Kwon Young-Woo grew up in the field of Eastern painting, he soon chucked away brush and black-stone ink, insisting only on paper. He keeps on his unique aesthetic journey bearing the attitude and practice in decisiveness and absoluteness.
<Kim Bok-Ki, "Conversation with the Artist; Kwon Young-Woo, Another Transformation of the Paper Artist", Monthly Art, June 1998>

5. Kim Ho-Suk – Artist of the Year 1999

Kim Ho-Suk said, "I feel deeply responsible for preserving traditional Korean painting in the purest form. However, at the same time, it is my responsibility to render the tradition to something based upon the life of the people." While making Korean tradition into something valid, Kim Ho-Suk shows us the interior of the democratic potential that is inherent in Korean culture a potential that is buried under the politics and history. 
<Robert J. Fouser, "Politics and History in the art of Kim Ho-Suk's Art", Artist of the Year: Kim Ho-Suk, 1999>

6. Noh Sang-Kyoon – Artist of the Year 2000

By using sequins a material that is rather common, glossy and cheap Noh Sang-Kyoon created deeply contemplative pictorial planes, thus drawing attention from the public. The medium ofhis painting, that is, sequins, symbolically reveals to us about the present time when public art shapes our preference and sensibility.
<Curatorial department at National Museum of Contemporary Art, "Finding out what Identity is Upon selecting the Artist of the Year 2000", Artist of the Year 2000: Noh Sang-Kyoon, 2000>

7. Lee Bae – Artist of the Year 2000

'Charcoal' was not a language of art; it was a discovery; it was found by the artist as a tool of life and an instrument of doing the work. The charcoal and the artist have been leading, pushing, throwing and embracing each other, and continuing the lugubrious relationship of confrontation and conflation until today...Apart from the first, elementary materialof charcoal, the second material of the colour black espoused as the Oriental sensibility is readily immanent in Lee Bae's work.
<You Keun-Oh, "Inner Syncretization of Conscious and Material", Monthly Art, January 2001> 

8. Chun Kwang-Young – Artist of the Year 2001

Chun Kwang-Young is an artist who succeeded in creatively visualizing the Oriental sensibilities and memories through the use of hanji, a type of traditional paper in Korea. He is one of the first few who gained recognition overseas for the formation of his artistic works... He transformed the sensibilities embedded in his birth and growthand the memories of hanji into the universal emblematic formation. Having done so successfully, he was deservingly selected to be Artist of the Year2001 at NMCA.
<Kim Yeon-Hee, "Chun Kwang-Young", The Story of 23 Artists of the Year 1995-2010, 2011>

9. Kwon Ok-Youn – Artist of the Year 2001

It seems that Kwon Ok-Youn tries to attain a simplification of his painting through colours, rather than forms. A simplistic tone is his goal. Thus, he renders the lines sharp and crisp, and his colours have a subdued and mellow tone, to the effect of having the primordial, Oriental pictorial plane. In this way, the clean and unaffected culture of Oriental black ink is interpreted as the colour of Western exuberance.
<Lee Keon-Soo, "Rèalitè of the Deep-Blue Memories:Kwon Ok-Youn", Monthly Art, December 2001>

10. Seung H-Sang – Artist of the Year 2002

Korea has been going through a rapid and intense economic growth, with its reckless urbanization and overproduction of architecture; in total contrast, Seung H-Sang insisted upon the design for empty space (a yard) that did not have purpose except for resting and sharing. This only makes the reason for NMCA's decision to award him more definitive.
<Lee Chu-Young, "Seung H-Sang", The Story of 23 Artists of the Year 1995-2010, 2011>

11. Jeon Hyeok-Lim – Artist of the Year 2002

Jeon Hyeok-Lim was laurelled as Artist of the Year2002. His works were done in the Korean style with their exquisite sense of colour. The intense sunlight from the sea surrounding Tongyeong-si, together with the plastic configuration inspired by folk paintings, traditional architecture and folk crafts, were all subjects that are born into the various experiments of paintings, ceramics and sculptures. He stubbornly stuck to his own style and he was still vigorously engaged in producing works in his eighties, which made it all the more worthwhile to observe his art in a new light.
<Liu Jienne, "Jeon Hyeok-Lim", The Story of 23 Artists of the Year 1995-2010, 2011>

12. Kwak Duck-Jun – Artist of the Year 2003

Kwak Duck-Jun could not help but to suffer from double impact of pain. He was never able to escape from the status of the Other within the Japanese society even though he settled there as a Korean-Japanese, and again back in Korea, he was still the Other. The definite belonging had been perpetually deferred. It might be this life experience of his that drove him to delve into his identity, and furthermore, made him one of the most outstanding artists of the times.
<Oh Kwang-Su, "Foreword", Artist of the Year 2003:Kwak Duck-Jun, 2003>

13. Han Mook – Artist of the Year 2003

The artist's intention to visualize the infinite space...and the swirl of a spiral...emitting a sense of the broad expanse of the universe, adds sensations of rhythm and kinetics to the whole ambience of thepictorial surface, thus making it dynamic as if the images are erupting. In short, Han Mook has consciously and steadily pursued the idea of capturing a spatial sensation within the picture plane. Such artistic concern entitled him to becoming recognized as one of the few artist who represents geometrical abstraction in the Korean art scene.
<Ki Hey-Kyung, "Han Mook", The Story of 23 Artists of the Year 1995-2010, 2011>

14. Jeong Jeom-Shik – Artist of the Year 2004

He is recognized as the godfather of abstraction art in the region of Daegu where figurative art is dominant. Moreover, it is evident that he has been revered for a long time as anadvocate of modernism. Yet, it looks as if there was either too much reverence, or too little acknowledgement of his presence and his artistic accomplishment. Within a perimeter of Daegu, he is the monumental existence which embodies the triumph of abstraction art over figurative art, whereas at the outside of Daegu, he is known merely as afine local artist; apart from Daegu, he is alienated from the rest of the art circle.
<Kim In-Hye, "Catalogue Essay for Artist of the Year 2004: Jeong Jeom-Shik", Artist of the Year 2004: Jeong Jeom-Shik, 2004>

15. Kim Yik-Yung – Artist of the Year 2004

The beauty of Kim Yik-Yung's ceramic is more of the angular transformation rather than of the colour; he explored a shift from the circle to the angle. By this transference, his work was able to acquiremodern and sophisticating beauty, going beyond the boundary of traditional ceramics.
<Lee Keon-Soo, "Bowl Containing the Time of Eternity", Monthly Art, September 2001>

16. Yoon Kwang-Cho – Artist of the Year 2004

The rhythmical breathing ensconced in thesimple form and shape is Yoon Kwang-Cho's style, and it makes the earth alive. The breathing is created as sometimes repetitive, sometimes steady and at other times, as if one is panting heavily, capturing the creator's mind each moment. His art is reckoned as exemplary of the modern achievement grounded upon the tradition in the field of his own genre.
<Choi Kwang-Jin, "Yoon Kwang-Cho, Typical Expressive Korean Celadon", Artist of the Year 2004, 2004>

17.Suh Se-Ok – Artist of the Year 2004

By lending equal weight to images and brush-stroke, Suh Se-Ok's painting integrates the dichotomous sign system images conveying body and brushstrokes embodying mind into a single sign. In other words, two become one; the brush-stroke is laden with the physical movement and the images become the emblem ofmind. It fundamentally blursthe dichotomy. In his painting, wielding the brush is the evidence of embracing the images of the object andspirituality. The artist is not partial on either coincidence or control on the plane where co-existence and harmony is created. In the span of 30 years starting from his early works in which different objects and sights are mingled with people, he consistently delivered the holistic perspective of human beings and the world. The subject matter to realise this holistic perspective is 'people', who carry with them a constellation of sorrow, regrets, resentment, and resignation.
<Yoon Nan-Ji, "Suh Se-Ok's Peo-ple", Suh Se-Ok, 2005>

18. Lee Jong-Gu – Artist of the Year 2005

Lee Jong-Gu is an artist who is critical of reality, and instead personally shared theexperience of the people; through which, as a realism artist, he drew their agonies and pains, their anger, frustrations and hopes. In order to more effectively portray the minds of the people, he boldly and innovatively incorporated non-traditional materials in his art such as rice bags, supper-tables, farming equipment, election posters and advertising fliers.
<Ryu Han-Seung, "Lee Jong-Gu", The Story of 23 Artists of the Year 1995-2011, 2011>

19. Chung, Hyun – Artist of the Year 2006

Once again, I am assured that through this exhibition, Chung Hyun's preoccupation consequently became a signpost on the path of restoring the essence of sculpture. His work reminds me that he uncovered the dignified out of the shabby and squalid. It is needless to say that the dignity corresponds to the integrity of human beings, which he has consistently explored.
<Choi Tae-Man, "From the Sculpture Again", Art in Culture, November 2006>

20. Jung Yeon-Doo – Artist of the Year 2007

Jung Yeon-Doo's solo exhibition for Artist of the Year 2007, was so well constructed that the thirst for more will disappear. ...Mediumsof music, installation, photography and documentary films are appropriately distributed. The structure of the exhibition has been so meticulously prepared that the audience will not become bored achieved through the various use of medium. What is more, the audience can walk around the work as if travelling, listening to the narration of the artist or even feeling the delight of hearing the secrets behind the works.
<Shin Bo-Seul,"Review", Monthly Art, August 2007>

21. Chang Yeon-Soon – Aritst of the Year 2008

Ironically, Chang Yeon-Soon's labour-intensive manual artwork is the outcome of deep contemplation. She set up objects in relation to the void space relying on the spontaneity of colours spreading across the fabric; the work is not artist-centred, but it is about emptying the self.
<Jung Young-Baek, "The Aesthetics of Weaving One Strand at a Time, Art in Culture", September 2008>

22. Suh Yong-Sun – Artist of the Year 2009

Suh Yong-Sun, Artist of the Year 2009, deals with a various range of subject matters such as the human figure, landscape, history, war and mythology but he is particularly widely known for his series of descriptions of human figures living in the city, and his visualisation of historical events...Through the compactly constructed surface and expressively intense colours, the artist employs his artistic language to bring out the issue of human existence.
<Kim Kyoung-Woon, "Suh Yong-Sun's Art: Thoughtful Attraction", Artist of the Year 2009: Suh Yong-Sun, 2009>

23. Park Ki-Won – Artist of the Year 2010

What Park Ki-Won emphasizes most upon creating his art is the 'place', 'emptiness', 'resting' and 'state of zero'. Different from the modern Man who leads a busy life he is a person who lives languidly, humbly and ordinarily. Compared to other mundane activities in life, He believes that 'resting' is the most important.
<Lee Gwan-Hoon, "Park Ki-Won: The Artist Who Popped Into the Museum for Fresh Air", Monthly Art, May 2010>