iMMCA SeoulSogyeok-dong, Jongno-gu
Korea Artist Prize 2026
Korea's leading contemporary-art award exhibition, presenting new and key earlier works by the four 2026 finalists: Lee Haemin Sun, Lee Jungwoo, Jeon Hyunsun, and Hong Jin-hwon.
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Lee Hai Min Sun's Lingering Snow is a winter scene with no snow painted in it. Photographic paper can't print white, so she leaves those patches bare and paints what surrounds them: dust, stains, the marks of melting. Seoul couples promise to meet at the first snow; Lee's snow is the part she left blank.
This is the finalists' show for Korea's main contemporary art award: four artists, about 100 works, in Gallery 1 on the ground floor and Gallery 2 in B1. You stand facing Jeon Hyunsun's thirty canvases, hung as one 6-by-20-metre face tilted 15 degrees toward you. Lee Jungwoo uses generative AI to rebuild lost scenes from a 1946 liberation film, and the AI censors its own reconstruction.
The curators set out to keep questions open rather than answer them, so expect four separate practices, not one theme. Entry is 2,000 won, free for under-24s, and free on Wednesday and Saturday evenings from 6pm to 9pm.
Look for
Lingering Snow
Look for the white: the snow is bare photographic paper, with painted dust, stains and melt marks around it.
Even Rabbits Dig a Second Burrow
Thirty 2-metre watercolour canvases, painted dot by dot, form one 6-by-20-metre face tilted 15 degrees toward you like a climbing wall.
In Writing "Hurrah for Freedom": Cinema and History
Missing scenes from a 1946 Korean liberation film rebuilt with generative AI, which refuses propaganda imagery and misreads historical references along the way.
Outside
A tarpaulin over a construction site, painted in acrylic on photographic paper 150 by 180 cm, years after it was first put up.
The Highest Form of the Image Is Armed Struggle
Hong Jin-hwon's 33-minute video lays a 1971 Japanese Red Army and PFLP declaration over staged Korean rallies.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want one big theme: four separate practices, and the curators set out to leave questions open.
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Image credits
9
- Korea Artist Prize 2026Courtesy of MMCA Seoul
- 2mc1dj: Event Volume 3Exhibition Graphic, 2026. Graphic Design: Seungtaek Hong.
- VerticalsExhibition Graphic, 2026. Graphic Design: Kim Gunyong (wowsan guardian).
- Haneyl Choi: SleepwalkingExhibition Graphic, 2026. Graphic Design: Moonsick Gang.
- MMCA Seouljens kuu, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Art Sonje CenterBonnielou2013 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National Folk Museum of KoreaGaël Chardon, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Seoul Museum of Craft ArtYoungjin, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National Palace Museum of KoreaJinho Jung, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0