U-Ram Choe is an artist based in Seoul, South Korea.
Kim Whanki was a painter and pioneering abstract artist of Korea, born in the village of Eupdong-ri on the island of Kijwa, of Anjwa-myeon, Sinan County, South Jeolla Province in Korea under Japanese rule. Kim lived and worked in a number of cities and countries during his lifetime, including Tokyo, Japan; Seoul and Busan, Korea; Paris, France; and New York City, USA, where he died.
Park Seo-bo was a South Korean painter known for his "Écriture" series, involvement in the Korean Art Informel movement, and particular formal concerns around painting that have led critics and art historians to identify him as a leading Dansaekhwa artist.
Gregory Maass and Nayoungim are two artists who work together as a collaborative duo called Gregory Maass & Nayoungim. Gregory Maass & Nayoungim's idiosyncratic work brings together philosophy, psychoanalysis, cybernetics, cybernetic management, economy, fringe science, science fiction, art and craft, music, comics, conspiracy theory, sub-culture, and food by focusing on such diverse means as adaptation, normality, perversion, and methodology. They are the founders of Kim Kim Gallery, which describes itself as "a non-profit organization, locative art, an art dealership based on unconventional marketing, a curatorial approach, an exhibition design firm, and editor of rare art books, depending on the situation it adapts to; in short, it does not fit the format imposed by the term Gallery." One rarely appears in public without the other.
Kim Beom is a South Korean multimedia artist.
Lee Seung-taek is a Korean interdisciplinary artist. He is a sculptor, an installation artist, and a performance artist—conceptualizing in the notion of "anti-concept" or "anti-art" in the Korean art scene.
Gallery Hyundai (Korean: 갤러리현대) is a contemporary art gallery in Seoul, South Korea. It was founded in 1970, initially in Insadong. It moved to Samcheong-ro, Sagan-dong in 1975.
Chung Sanghwa is a South Korean minimalist and Dansaekhwa artist. After receiving his BFA from the College of Fine Arts in Seoul National University in 1956, Chung developed his unique grid-like painting style in Japan and France in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Coming from a generation of post-war South Korean artists, Chung's reductive process of painting consists of repetitive application and removal of the paint on canvas.
“My work starts on a plane and ends on a plane. The world of planes is richly embedded with infinite expressions. I did not only think about the plane—the surface flowing up and down—but also the movement of moving in and out like the heart beats. […] The surface of my work represents things on which the breath goes in and out and the pulse beats and disappears. To visually turn it into a language—that is what really matters.” – Chung Sanghwa
Park Hyun-ki was a pioneer of Korean video art.
Dansaekhwa, often translated as "monochrome painting" from Korean, is a retroactive term grouping together disparate artworks that were exhibited in South Korea beginning in the mid 1970s. While the wide range of artists whose work critics and art historians consider to fall under this category are often exhibited together, they were never part of an official artistic movement nor produced a manifesto. Nonetheless, their artistic practices are seen to share "a commitment to thinking more intensively about the constituent elements of mark, line, frame, surface and space around which they understood the medium of painting." Their interests compose a diverse set of formal concerns that cannot be reduced to a preference for limited color palettes.
Cho Yong-ik was a South Korean artist. He was a leading figure in Korean abstract painting along with Kim Tschang Yeul, Park Seo-bo, and Chung Sang-Hwa.
Mari Kim (Korean: 마리킴) is a South Korean contemporary artist from Seoul, South Korea. She is known for the big-eyed, cartoon-like female characters in her pop art paintings, called "eyedolls". Her work was popularly recognized after her 2011 collaboration with the K-pop girl group 2NE1, directing the animated music video for their single "Hate You". The single topped charts and the music video, with eyedoll action heroines portraying each of the four members, received over twenty million YouTube views.
Young-Il Ahn was a Korean American artist living and working in Los Angeles, California. Considered a child prodigy in his native Korea, Young-Il Ahn relocated permanently to the United States in 1966. His painting style is mostly abstract, and tends to be inspired by his natural surroundings. In recent years, his work has been exhibited in retrospectives at LACMA and Long Beach Museum of Art.
Bahc Yiso, also known as Mo Bahc, was a visual artist, cultural organizer, curator, theorist, and educator.
Space & Time Group (ST) was an art and reading group in Korea from 1969 to 1980. The group was led by Lee Kun-yong who focused on studying and applying international art theory to art in order to respond to Yusin Korea's tumultuous socio-political atmosphere in covert ways. Though membership was always changing, the initial assembly of members included Kim Bok-young, Kim Munja, Yeo Yoon, Park Wonjun, Han Jeongmun, and Shin Sung Hy. They held 8 exhibitions, published journals, and held seminars. Of all the avant-garde groups in Korea at the time, ST was the most theoretically rigorous and enthusiastic to learn about and apply European, American, and Japanese art theory. The group is best known for their performances called “events” which put a focus on temporality, space, bodies, actions, and subjectivity over objects.
The Korean Avant-Garde Association, better known as the AG Group, was a post-war collective of artists and critics in South Korea that practiced and advocated for the role of avant-garde art in and, thus, the advancement of contemporary Korean art. Between its establishment in 1969 and dissolution in 1975, the group organized three major, thematic group exhibitions and the 1974 Seoul Biennale, while publishing its own journal, AG. The association's members experimented across painting, sculpture, installation art, and performance art. The journal, driven by its members who were art critics, highlighted and discussed theories and trends in the visual arts on an international scale, which was one of the first attempts to do so in South Korea. Their organized and pioneering efforts have been noted as significant to the development of contemporary Korean art.
Chung Chang-sup was a Korean abstract painter and first-generation member of the post-war art movement, Dansaekhwa. At the start of his career he worked with oil paint as his main medium, but later on he explored Korean materials such as hanji and ink paints. Since he held close relations to government elite, he was able to have success as an oil painter hired as a part of the state-sponsored National Painting Project. His lifelong explorations with hanji pulp, called tak, are more well-known and became his trademark. Chung's unique approach to Korean materials was inspired by Eastern philosophies regarding harmony and nature. As one of the leading innovators of Dansaekwa, Chung's works were, and continue to be exhibited internationally in group and solo shows.
Jung Yeondoo is a South Korean visual artist who works primarily with photography, videography, and sculpture. He has a studio located in Seoul. He was the youngest recipient of the "Artist of the Year" award by the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea in 2007. He has been selected as the artist featured in the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2023. He has shown work in numerous museums and biennials worldwide like the 51st Venice Biennial and the Liverpool Biennial in 2008. His work is featured in public and private art collections throughout the world such as the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Chung Chan-seung, was a South Korean visual artist. He was also known as Chan S. Chung during his time in New York City.
Park Chan-kyong is a South Korean media artist, filmmaker, and arts critic. Park is known for his advocacy of the revival of minjung art in the 90s through both exhibition organizing and writing. With his first solo show in 1997, Park's career as a media artists working across across photography, film, sculpture, and installation art took off, even as he continued to write criticism and curate shows. His multimedia works often deal with traumatic moments in Korean modern and contemporary history, the relevance of tradition in the modern age, and the shifting role of spiritual practices like shamanism in contemporary Korea.
