Korean contemporary art is expanding at a rapid pace. The ecosystem surrounding art—museums, galleries, non-profit spaces, art fairs, independent publishing, and archival platforms—has diversified significantly. At the same time, the ways exhibitions are conceived, organized, and mediated have become increasingly complex.
 
Yet, despite this growth, there remains relatively little open discussion about how exhibitions are actually constructed, and how curators navigate the layered processes of decision-making and coordination that shape them.
 
In this context, VOSTOK’s lecture series “Curating Plan” presents a focused and meaningful initiative. Rather than approaching curating as an abstract theoretical framework or a general introduction to a profession, the program turns to the lived experience of working curators to examine how exhibitions come into being.
 
It positions curatorial practice not as a simple act of selecting and installing works, but as a composite process that negotiates artistic inquiry, institutional conditions, spatial operations, shifting media environments, and modes of audience engagement.
 
 
The program brings together Seulbi Lee (Director of Mihakgwan), Seongwoo Kim (Director of Primary Practice), Hyukkyu Kwon (Curator at Museumhead), Seonghwi Lee (Curator at Hite Collection), and Yulri Yoon (Chief Curator at Ilmin Museum of Art).
 
Each lecture addresses a distinct dimension of exhibition-making, including execution, the relationship between practice and inquiry, fragmented temporality, intermedial reference, and the structural composition of exhibitions.
 
 
 
Lecture 1
Observer of the World, Now with Execution
Seulbi Lee / Director, Mihakgwan
Date: Thursday, May 7, 2026, 19:30
 
The first lecture frames the curator as both an observer of the world and an agent of execution. Exhibition-making does not culminate in ideas alone. Proposal writing, budget management, spatial coordination, scheduling, and the ability to respond to unforeseen variables must operate in tandem for an exhibition to take form. This lecture focuses on the practical judgments and operational decisions that curators confront throughout the realization process.

Seulbi Lee is an exhibition-maker and Director of Mihakgwan. Her practice centers on writing and curating, with a particular interest in texts that articulate invisible systems and structures through diverse languages. Through the operation of Mihakgwan, she has produced exhibitions across a range of formats and scales.
 
 
 
Lecture 2
Practices and Questions
Seongwoo Kim / Director, Primary Practice
Date: Thursday, May 14, 2026, 19:30
 
The second lecture examines curatorial practice through the relationship between action and inquiry. Curating extends beyond administration, functioning as a process that generates questions and produces knowledge through exhibitions. This session considers how curatorial work moves across theory and practice, surface and depth, and process and outcome.

Seongwoo Kim is a curator engaged in exhibition-making and writing. His work investigates how systems of history, culture, media, and society construct, represent, and distort individual and collective identities. He defines exhibitions as events inscribed in space, where temporality and action are condensed, and approaches curating as a means of enabling alternative, micro, and speculative forms of community.
 
He served as Chief Curator of Amado Art Space (2015–2018), co-curated the 2018 Gwangju Biennale as part of a curatorial collective, and was a curatorial advisor for the 2020 Busan Biennale.
 
He currently runs the non-profit curatorial space Primary Practice, founded in 2022.
 
 
 
Lecture 3
Broken Exhibitions, Bleeding Exhibitions: Reconfiguring Fragmented Time
Hyukkyu Kwon / Curator, Museumhead
Date: Thursday, May 21, 2026, 19:30
 
The third lecture approaches the exhibition not as a completed form, but as a provisional structure composed of fragmented temporalities and events. Contemporary curatorial practice can be understood as a critical act of reorganizing and reassembling these dispersed conditions. This lecture examines how exhibitions operate through temporality, intermedial expansion, and relational structures in the present context.

Hyukkyu Kwon is a curator at Museumhead, whose work focuses on exhibition structures and the temporality of contemporary art through ongoing research and practice.
 
 
 
Lecture 4
Interreferential Relations Between Photography and Sculpture in Contemporary Art
Seonghwi Lee / Curator, Hite Collection
Date: Thursday, May 28, 2026, 19:30
 
The fourth lecture explores how photography and sculpture intersect and transform one another within contemporary art. In an expanded digital image environment, photography records and reconstructs the materiality of sculpture, while sculpture is archived as images and recirculated as visual objects. This lecture highlights how media boundaries are continuously redefined through processes of mutual reference.

Seonghwi Lee studied industrial design and art theory and has been a curator at the Hite Foundation since 2012. His recent exhibitions include《Form Is Not an Exception but a Rule》(Hite Collection, 2025),《Next Painting: As We Are》(Kukje Gallery, 2025),《Oblivio 1: Fragments》(Space After, 2025),《The Eye of the Sky Watching You》(Hite Collection, 2024),《Brilliant City》(Nothing Is Real, 2024),《Finite and Infinite Force》(Hite Collection, 2024),《Angle》(Hite Collection, 2022),《Jeonguk Kwang, Modernist》(WESS, 2022), and《Live Forever》(Hite Collection, 2019).
 
 
 
Lecture 5
Flesh and Bone: What Constitutes an Exhibition
Yulri Yoon / Chief Curator, Ilmin Museum of Art
Date: Thursday, June 4, 2026, 19:30
 
The final lecture examines the exhibition through the structural metaphor of “flesh and bone.” An exhibition emerges through the interrelation of works, texts, space, interpretation, and sensibility. This session focuses on the processes of selection, placement, connection, collaboration, and revision that shape an exhibition into a coherent experiential form.

Yulri Yoon has worked as a curator, co-director, and head of curatorial departments at AURORA, WESS, and Ilmin Museum of Art. She has also been active as a curator, director, editor, and critic in projects such as AP Asia, Archive Bom, Typojanchi, and Festival Bom.
 
 
 
From Viewing Exhibitions to Understanding Them
 
The significance of “Curating Plan” lies not simply in presenting a sequence of lectures. It creates a platform where the processes and decision-making structures of curatorial practice are openly shared within the context of contemporary Korean art.
 
The development of an art scene is not determined solely by the number of exhibitions or the scale of its market. It also depends on how exhibition-making processes are accumulated, how these experiences are transmitted, and how they are articulated for future curators and audiences.
 
In this respect, “Curating Plan” operates as a compact yet dense educational and discursive framework. It provides artists, curators, researchers, and audiences with an opportunity to engage with exhibitions as structured, layered constructs rather than singular events.
 
The expansion of such programs—lectures, seminars, and workshops that share practical knowledge and critical reflection—will be essential to the continued development of the Korean art ecosystem. As the culture shifts from viewing exhibitions to understanding how they are made, the structural foundation of contemporary art can be further consolidated.

VOSTOK Press & Library
 
VOSTOK Library is a space for readers and practitioners interested in photography, books, and art publishing. Operated by VOSTOK Press, it introduces a wide range of publications spanning photography, design, contemporary art, and literature, while functioning as a platform for sharing artistic discourse through lectures and public programs. VOSTOK Press publishes the bimonthly photography magazine『VOSTOK Magazine』as well as a range of art-related books.
 

 
Program Information
 
Program Title: VOSTOK Relay Lecture “Curating Plan”
Schedule: May 7 – June 4, 2026 (Every Thursday at 19:30)
Venue: VOSTOK Library (2F, 153 Seongmisan-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul)
Website: vostokpress.net
Instagram: @vostok_mag
Contact: vostokon@gmail.com