On view at Hoam Museum of Art from September 1 to December 27, 2026, Art Spectrum: 《ARoomWhereEveryRadioIsTunedtoDifferentStations》 marks a shift from a program dedicated to discovering Korean artists toward an internationally co-curated exhibition.
 
Organized in collaboration with Palais de Tokyo in France, this edition brings together 23 artists and collectives from 10 countries, with a particular focus on Asia. It presents 63 works spanning visual art, architecture, film, design, music, and other creative practices.
 
This broader geographic and disciplinary scope also reshapes the program’s purpose and the contexts in which artists are understood. Having introduced new artists within the Korean art scene, Art Spectrum now connects practitioners from different regions, creating opportunities to reconsider Korean artists’ work through these encounters. Understanding the exhibition therefore requires attention both to individual works and to this institutional shift.

A New Direction for a Program Supporting Korean Artists
 
Established in 2001, Art Spectrum has served as a platform for discovering and supporting emerging Korean artists. A significant turning point came with 《Dream Screen》 in 2024. With Rirkrit Tiravanija as artistic director and Hyo Gyoung Jeon and Jiwon Yu as co-curators, the program expanded its scope to include artists from across Asia. The exhibition explored the bodily sensations and perceptions of reality of a generation that had grown up experiencing the world through screens.

The 2026 edition continues this expansion while reconfiguring its curatorial framework. Co-curated by Hyo Gyoung Jeon, June Young Kwak, and Palais de Tokyo’s Hugo Vitrani, it also moves from Leeum to Hoam. Its central approach is to bring works shaped by different cultural and social circumstances into conversation while preserving their distinctions, rather than subsuming them under a single identity or narrative.
 
This shift broadens the frame of reference for interpreting Korean artists’ work. Practices previously considered primarily in terms of generations and trends within the Korean art scene are placed alongside experiences of labor and urban life, technology and the body, migration and identity across Asia. The particular qualities of Korean artists’ work can become more legible through these relationships, as viewers consider how artists using similar media or addressing shared concerns respond to different social circumstances.
 
 
 
Why Collaborate with Palais de Tokyo?
 
The collaboration with Palais de Tokyo brings together the two institutions’ efforts to discover emerging artists. In an interview, Vitrani cited their shared interest in younger artists as a basis for the partnership and expressed a desire to learn about artistic practices in Asia. Palais de Tokyo’s official materials also describe its expanding engagement with artistic and cultural scenes across the region. The exhibition is part of the official program marking the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and the Republic of Korea.
 
Vitrani has explored the relationship between urban culture and art institutions and initiated the “Lasco Project”, which experiments with urban art in Palais de Tokyo’s subterranean spaces. His curatorial work offers a useful context for considering how subcultures intervene in different areas of the museum in this exhibition.
 
The partnership is significant in that a Korean institution provides the venue and conditions for production, while curators with experience in different art scenes connect artists and practices. Korean contemporary art’s international engagement grows both through artists’ participation in exhibitions abroad and through Korean institutions’ capacity to initiate international conversations. Art Spectrum’s evolution demonstrates the potential of this latter approach.
 
 
 
Connecting Practices Through “Asia”
 
The exhibition connects creators from different regions with Asia as its central focus. The participation of French artist Ibrahim Meïté Sikely makes clear that its scope extends beyond artists who are nationals of Asian countries. Engagement with Asian cultures, cultural exchange, and movement between regions also offer ways to understand its composition. The Korean and French curators seek points of connection between practices while retaining the differences in their backgrounds.
 
These connections can be found in workplace hazards, bodies moving through urban infrastructure, and the ways architecture directs visitors’ movement. Considering Korean artists’ work alongside practices from elsewhere opens up a broader view of how they respond to contemporary concerns.
 
 
 
Giving Spatial Form to Labor and the Body
 
Chinese artist Ruofan Chen’s Suffocating originates in the poor ventilation and dust exposure she witnessed at a furniture factory in Wuhan. A house-like structure, tilted as though on the verge of collapse, brings the risks borne by workers who produce everyday objects into the exhibition space. The image of a house as a source of shelter and stability is overlaid with the precarity of production, prompting viewers to consider both the appearance of finished objects and the working conditions behind them.

Dong Hyun Lee’s Hanging Baby Monkey combines pipes, fabric, light, and smoke. Linked to Sleeping Mother Monkey, also included in the exhibition, the work connects the mother’s and infant’s bodies through a structure carrying light, smoke, and sound. Its pipework evokes both the interior of a living organism and the service systems of a city.
 
The combination of industrial apparatus and the forms of vulnerable living creatures reveals how one body depends on another. The flows between them suggest connections that sustain life and can also be read in terms of care and interdependence.

Read together, the two works draw attention to the environments surrounding the body. Chen exposes the hazards of the workplace, while Lee expresses the dependence of living beings through flows connecting two bodies.
 
 
 
Urban Structures and Visitors’ Movement
 
The Japanese artist collective SIDE CORE’s rode work ver. under city connects subterranean urban infrastructure with the movements of skateboarders. Drainage facilities, tunnels, and maintenance corridors become linked through new routes traced by moving bodies. The four-channel video reveals parts of the city that are ordinarily difficult to access and explores the possibilities of using spaces beyond their designated functions.

Ria Choi’s Slopes, Pillar of Pillars, and Welcome Fence divide and traverse the gallery, affecting visitors’ sightlines and movement. Elements that support or partition space take sculptural form, encouraging viewers to examine materials and shapes while becoming aware of their own position within the room.
 
The title Welcome Fence brings an expression of hospitality together with a device that marks a boundary. It invites reflection on how a space welcomes people while also directing their movement.

Both SIDE CORE and Choi draw attention to bodies using space. Movement through the city’s underground and visitors’ passage between sculptures offer two ways of experiencing spatial structures anew.
 
 
 
Transforming the Garden: Looking, Walking, and Resting
 
Rachel Youn’s Parade Paradis II places a rotating artificial palm tree among the living trees at Hoam Museum of Art. Its mechanical movement introduces an unfamiliar rhythm into the garden’s familiar landscape, while the juxtaposition of living and fabricated trees brings the distinction between nature and artifice into focus.
 
The juxtaposition of the traditional garden and the palm tree’s associations with distant, exotic places also invites reflection on how images of paradise are constructed. The work draws its meaning from the tension between these associations and the cultural character of Hoam’s garden.

Japanese architect Suzuko Yamada’s Hanging Moon suspends an eight-meter-wide hemispherical canopy in the garden, creating a place where visitors can linger beneath it. Observing how this large form is suspended against gravity, and resting beneath it, are both part of experiencing the work.

While Youn adds an unfamiliar movement to the garden’s scenery, Yamada creates a place to stay within it. Together, the works extend the experience of an outdoor exhibition by connecting viewing, walking, and rest.
 
Lee and Choi also play important roles in these spatial experiments. Apparatus connecting bodies and sculptures directing visitors’ movement give concrete form to the questions Korean artists bring to an international curatorial collaboration.
 
 
 
What Comes Next for Artist Support?
 
Art Spectrum’s expansion can offer Korean artists new opportunities to consider their work in a broader context, exchange ideas, and produce new work. Commissions are particularly valuable in supporting artists as they develop work in response to a museum’s spaces and circumstances. Relationships with international peers and curators may likewise become an important part of the program’s evolving value.
 
Alongside this shift, it is important to consider how the program continues its original role of supporting emerging Korean artists. As international participation broadens, changes to selection criteria, the artists receiving support, and subsequent opportunities are central to understanding the program’s direction.
 
Art Spectrum 2026 demonstrates how a Korean artist-development program can build international relationships and broaden its approaches to exhibition-making and support. Its achievements can be assessed through the new contexts it offers for reading Korean artists’ work, opportunities to produce new commissions, and exchanges that continue beyond the exhibition, as well as through the range of countries and disciplines represented. The significance of this expansion will become clearer if the experiments with Hoam’s spaces lead to sustained improvements in artist support.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information
 
Exhibition: 2026 Art Spectrum: 《ARoomWhereEveryRadioIsTunedtoDifferentStations》
Dates: September 1–December 27, 2026
Venue: Hoam Museum of Art
Co-curators: Hyo Gyoung Jeon, June Young Kwak, Hugo Vitrani
Participants and works: 23 artists and collectives from 10 countries; 63 works
Participating artists: Lêna Bùi, Ruofan Chen, Musquiqui Chihying, Ria Choi, dpgp78, Halominium, Aerin Hong, Jasleen Kaur, Jisu Kim, Dong Hyun Lee, Elia Nurvista, Wunggyu Park, Michelle Chang Qin, Seendosi, Lieko Shiga, SIDE CORE, Ibrahim Meïté Sikely, Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Martin Wong, Suzuko Yamada, Yuichi Yokoyama, Rachel Youn, Zhang Xu Zhan
Website: Hoam Museum of Art
 
 
[1] Physical Training Ground is an English rendering of 체력 단련 활동장; the artist’s official English title could not be verified.