In the 21st century, South Korea has solidified its position as a global cultural powerhouse. K-pop dominates the global music industry, and K-dramas and K-literature have seamlessly entered people's daily lives worldwide, bridging popular culture and fine arts.
2024.12.17In 2024, a massive financial scandal rocked the South Korean art market. An art trading company called GALLERY K attracted large sums of money by promising investors a 7-9% annualized return and guaranteed principal, but recently, a class-action lawsuit by customers has revealed the full story.
2024.11.19Recently, the Korean art scene has been embroiled in a heated debate over the potential establishment of a branch of the iconic Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou (Pompidou Center) in Korea.
2024.10.22Last week, we reflected on the 30-year history of the Gwangju Biennale and its achievements. This week, we will discuss the current state of various biennales actively held across Korea, their challenges, and the direction they need to take moving forward, alongside the Gwangju Biennale.
2024.09.24The hot topic this year is the 30th anniversary of the Gwangju Biennale. To commemorate this, we will take a look at its achievements, divided into two parts. In Part 1, we will briefly review the history and accomplishments of the Gwangju Biennale, and in Part 2, we will examine the challenges it faces and its future prospects.
2024.09.17In this final article of the series, we will discuss the essential conditions for the success of Korean art fairs and the absolute necessity of global expansion. Additionally, we will briefly examine the operational status of KIAF and Frieze Seoul over the past three years and explore the underlying realities of the so-called "era of 100 art fairs" in Korea.
2024.09.10In contemporary art, galleries, art fairs, and auctions are no longer merely channels of distribution. They are the structures through which works enter the market, gain visibility, acquire prices, and determine the position of artists. Under the conditions of the post-contemporary, the importance of these structures becomes even more pronounced.
2026.04.21The museum is the most stable institution in contemporary art and one of its most powerful mechanisms of selection. In contemporary art, the museum has functioned not simply as a space for collecting and exhibiting works, but as a key institution that determines what is recognized as contemporary art, which forms and languages acquire public visibility, and which exhibitions are granted institutional legitimacy.
2026.04.07The discussion thus far converges on a single question. Where does the future of Korean contemporary art begin? Can that future be explained solely through more exhibitions, faster international expansion, larger market scales, and increasingly elaborate discursive rhetoric?
2026.03.24When discussing the conditions of the post-contemporary, the first thing to guard against is the misunderstanding that it refers to a new style or a fashionable label. As discussed in the previous essays, the issue at stake is not the declaration of a new
2026.03.10The current crisis of contemporary art cannot be explained by stagnation in production or exhaustion of imagination. Countless exhibitions and projects continue to be organized, and new formal strategies and critical concerns consistently emerge.
2026.02.24Contemporary art is frequently discussed today through the language of crisis. This crisis is often framed as a loss of meaning: the claim that contemporary art has nothing new to say, that critique has become repetitive
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