‘The Art Newspaper’ (June 2, 2025) recently ran a cover story titled “Korean artists are taking the world by storm.” The feature explores why contemporary Korean art is resonating so strongly with international audiences. Following exhibitions in cities like New York, London, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore, the article gathers insights from curators and scholars to illustrate how this is not merely a trend—but a structural shift in the art world.


 
Institutional Recognition of Korean Artists

Central to the article is the upcoming solo presentation of Ayoung Kim at MoMA PS1 in New York, scheduled to run from November 6, 2025, to March 16, 2026.

The exhibition showcases her single-channel video Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2022), which earned the 2025 LG Guggenheim Award. This work examines South Korea's gig economy through a sensory narrative that investigates how automation and labor structures influence both the physical body and emotional life.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Do Ho Suh has been capturing attention with Seoul Home (2013–22) on display at Tate Modern in London. Simultaneously, Haegue Yang continues to gain international acclaim with her conceptual and materially rich work, actively engaging audiences in both Europe and the United States. In the article, Yang reflects,

“There are great artists in Korea. There always have been. No matter what circumstance—politically, socially, culturally—the artists are great.”


 
Beyond "K-Art": Embracing Diversity and Complexity

‘The Art Newspaper’ stresses that Korean contemporary art cannot be boxed into a single identity or aesthetic category. While traditional mediums such as ink painting and the abstraction of Dansaekhwa remain important, today’s Korean artists are addressing layered themes—technology, gender, social dynamics, and historical trauma—using deeply conceptual approaches.

Artists like Lee Bul and Mire Lee are reshaping narrative forms, focusing less on national origin and more on personal, structural, and global conditions. Their work reframes the Korean experience through a universal, contemplative lens.

Kyung‑Hwan Yeo, curator at the Seoul Museum of Art, emphasizes that
“Since the 1990s, Korean art has increasingly engaged with contemporaneity and plurality within the overarching sociopolitical and cultural transformations of globalization.”
He explains that this is not merely expansion in scope, but an internal restructuring of Korea’s artistic ecosystem. The establishment of the Gwangju Biennale (1995), Busan Biennale (1998), and Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2000) was followed by the emergence of new institutions and experimental media practices. This institutional groundwork has been bolstered by international galleries entering Seoul and the launch of Frieze Seoul, positioning South Korea as a major hub in the global art market.
 


Institutional Interest, Collection, and Scholarship

This increasing attention is reflected in museum acquisitions and academic research. In 2023, the 《Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea 1960s–1970s》 exhibition, organized by Seoul’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and later shown at the Guggenheim in New York and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, reintroduced Korean experimental artists into the global art historical narrative.
 
Soojung Kang, a senior curator at MMCA and a co-organizer of the show, observes:
“These artists were already present within the fabric of global avant-garde art, but the exhibition revealed their voices anew—reframing them as central to the broader international discourse.”
Following the exhibition, many involved artists have been featured in institutional exhibitions, their works acquired by major collections, and scholarly attention to Korea’s avant-garde practices has grown rapidly.


 
Koreanness as an Ongoing Artistic Exploration

A key reason why Korean art resonates globally is its engagement with complex historical and cultural experiences—military dictatorship, division, rapid industrialization, democratization, and the rise of technology-infused capitalism. These themes are not reduced to national branding but explored with depth and nuance.
 
Curator Yeo adds,
“For most, ‘Koreanness’ is not a label to claim, but rather a deeply rooted artistic preoccupation they have wrestled with over time.”
Korean aesthetics and identity are “continuously broken down and renewed within Korea’s cultural, economic and social context.”

Jiwon Lee, curator at the Sharjah Art Foundation, underscores that
“Substantial growth of a scene is not about finding a universal language or watering down the definitions but about being self-aware, providing access points and considering space and time for translation.”

She continues:
“Given this, Korean contemporary art can communicate a myriad of different themes, pulling from its rather dramatic transformation in the past century—from being a previously colonised and war‑ridden country to rising to a significant economic power in the world, as well as the societal conflicts and unresolved discords that derive from it.”


 
Shifting the Question: From Expansion to Connection

In its conclusion, ‘The Art Newspaper’ proposes that the crucial question facing Korean contemporary art is no longer whether it can go global, but rather:
 
How will it continue to connect?
This invites deeper reflection on:
 
- What narrative forms and languages Korean artists will adopt to dialogue with global art discourse.
- Who will interpret their stories, and from what critical perspectives.
- How local art platforms can secure sustainable roles within the global ecosystem.
 
Korean contemporary art has graduated from being a cultural trend to becoming a transformative force reshaping the structure and narrative of global art. The pressing question now is: How will we document, interpret, and sustain this ongoing momentum?



 
This piece is based on The Art Newspaper (June 2, 2025) cover article titled “Korean artists are taking the world by storm—but why does their work resonate so widely?”
Read the full original : theartnewspaper.com