Perspectives on Order and Fracture: Artist of the Year 2026 Opens

[Anchor]

The Artist of the Year exhibition, jointly hosted by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and the SBS Cultural Foundation, opened today (July 24). This year, four sponsored artists have been selected: Lee Hae-min-sun, Lee Jung-woo, Jeon Hyun-sun, and Hong Jin-hwan.

Reporter Lee Ju-sang has the details.

[Reporter]

[Artist of the Year 2026 / Until Dec. 6 / National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art]

Residual snow that remains unfrozen even after spring arrives.

The artist expresses this lingering snow on photographic printing paper rather than a canvas, exploring the boundaries of existence and the continuity of time.

[Lee Hae-min-sun / Artist : The residual snow remaining in the shade along with dust seems to resist disappearance, but on the other hand, it is in a state of stopping to maintain its shape.]

An attempt is made to reconstruct a film produced in 1946, of which no original copy remains, using AI, but the AI only provides learned images.

[Lee Jung-woo / Artist : Rather than saying we put in value A and got an unintended value, the foundation of such generative models is that their answers are determined by the volume of data trained.]

Thirty canvases, measuring 2 meters by 2 meters each, are mounted together like a rock-climbing wall.

Composed of the backs of canvases, which are rarely seen, it experiments with the boundaries between painting and installation.

[Jeon Hyun-sun / Artist : We are trying this with the thought that as the canvases expand beyond our bodily scale, it might offer a somewhat newer and unfamiliar visual experience.]

Cross-editing scenes of rallies that have turned into giant performance spaces with past footage reflects on the essence of images.

[Hong Jin-hwan / Artist : I am a person who believes that this world is operating based on images. So I am very interested in how these images manage and control this world.]

The Artist of the Year award is a leading contemporary art sponsorship program in South Korea co-hosted by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the SBS Cultural Foundation since 2012, selecting and supporting four artists each year.

[Kim Sung-hee / Director, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art : These are artists who have deeply explored themes regarding different media, different perspectives, history and future, technology and environment, as well as society and human beings.]

The final winner, the Artist of the Year 2026, will be selected in October following a secondary evaluation.

(Photo courtesy of MMCA / Reported by Seol Tae-hwan | Video editing by Park Sun-soo | VJ: Oh Se-kwan)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.