2022

<<10-Year Path of Korea Artist Prize>>

Joowon Park (Curator / National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea)

Korea Artist Prize, now well established as MMCA’s leading serial exhibition, has reached its tenth year. With origins lying in the Artist of the Year exhibition that ran at MMCA from 1995 to 2010, Korea Artist Prize was transformed into its current award-based format in 2012 as SBS Foundation began providing extensive support for Korean artists. Held ten times up to 2021, Korea Artist Prize has seen a total of 40 artists shortlisted, drawing high expectations and intense interest in the art world. But this year, as the program marks its tenth year, we attempt to revisit the meaning of the Korea Artist Prize system in our society and art world and look into its achievements.

As we commemorate the tenth anniversary of Korea Artist Prize and explore all video material that has been recorded for this award over a ten-year period, we pose the following questions: Why was the prize established, and why should it be continued? How does the prize affect the Korean art world and, more broadly, Korean society? Furthermore, we discuss the gaps and crossing points between contemporary art and our everyday life, thereby reflecting on the meaning of contemporary art in our society and the role of the museum as a platform to present art practices to audiences.

Divided into three sections, this archive project proposes various different ways for viewers exploring the creative processes of the past ten years of Korea Artist Prize to look at our world and at their daily lives, through artists, works, and interviews with those who have contributed to the exhibitions.

The exhibition begins in Gallery 2 of the museum, where lights turn on and off with the screening of videos, creating a variety of spatial transformations without the use of physical devices. The shelters at the center of Gallery 2, resembling bus stops, offer a chance both to stop and look back over the past ten years and to share our thoughts about where to head in the future. The videos shown on seven screens, installed like digital signboards in a public square, show artists as they interpret their era in their own unique languages and ways, once again capturing the contemporary issues that they addressed. The highly immersive and multisensory shelters function as liminal spaces on the boundaries of image and reality, and of past and present. The constant turning on and off of lights and screens throughout the space brings it a multi-layered character, showing the large archive graphic that fills Gallery 2 and the videos in turn.

Gallery 3 is configured to offer intimate encounters with stories not previously found in Korea Artist Prize exhibitions. Clusters of monitors evoking the control room of a broadcasting station are arranged to offer detailed insights into the organization of the prize and of key issues in Korean society. Each cluster comprises four monitors, playing archival videos that show in detail every process from prize judging to artist studio visits, the creation of new works, opening ceremonies, and exhibition overviews, all under themes that reflect the artists’ own perspectives.

Finally, Gallery 4 is configured as a lounge-like gathering space, proposing a role for artists of presenting new and critical perspectives amid the repetition of everyday life. Displaying catalogues and other materials from previous Korea Artist Prize exhibitions, it is designed as a space for perusing archives and gathering. Here, at a variety of workshops throughout the exhibition period featuring artists and related figures from previous prize years, various issues faced by Korean society and artists throughout the prize’s history will be discussed, and directions for its future considered. We will search for the most pressing issues to be considered currently within Korea Artist Prize, when seen as one of the country’s leading art systems and platforms, and the museum as an institution. And, through these discussion forums, we will improve the attitude of this system and institution in a direction that leads to solidarity over competition, and understanding and diversity over criticism.