MMCA Announced Four Finalists for Korea Artist Prize 2023

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA, Director Youn Bummo) has selected Byungjun Kwon, Gala Porras-Kim, Kang Seung Lee, and Sojung Jun as the four sponsored artists for the Korea Artist Prize 2023 exhibition, which it is co-organizing with the SBS Foundation. Having successfully organized the Korean art world’s top award system over the past decade, MMCA and the SBS Foundation are now effecting major institutional improvements to contribute to the global Korean Wave in art. One of these is the decision as of this year to include internationally active artists of Korean ethnicity among its candidates, regardless of their nationality.

The system for the 2023 edition of the Korea Artist Prize exhibition incorporates other changes besides the expansion of candidate eligibility. First, the amount of support provided for the creation of new artwork has been increased from KRW 40 million to 50 million. Second, the format attempts to showcase each artist’s body of work and capabilities in greater depth by shifting the usual focus of its exhibition from newer work to a combination of newer and older work. Third, the initial review process is adopting a simpler online format, while the second round is to include artist critiques, as well as open workshops to be held with the judges and artists, after the exhibition’s opening, with members of the art world and general public take part.

The first four artists selected for sponsorship following these institutional changes are figures who have been involved in diverse activities spanning the fields of sculpture, installation, photography, and video. Byungjun Kwon is a sound hardware researcher and artist who has focused on developing technology for recording three-dimensional sound and playing it back in exhibition environments. He has planned and produced new media performances that encompass elements of music, theater, and art. Gala Porras-Kim is a Korean-Colombian artist who is prolifically active on the global stage, with bases in Los Angeles and London. She focuses on structural vulnerabilities created by human beings, posing questions about the ways in which the original meaning of surviving cultural heritage and relics, has been forgotten or reinterpreted based on the contemporaryclassification systems of museums and art institutions. The Los Angeles- and Korea-based artist Kang Seung Lee focuses on the places where queer history and art history intersect, creating artwork that rediscovers and visualizes excluded minority narratives. Sojung Jun has used different media such as video, sound, sculpture, and publishing to create non-linear times and spaces that awaken new perceptions of the present, while turning her attention to how transformations in physical boundaries exist throughout ordinary sensory experiences.