Conversations on Korean Modern and Contemporary Art

Join us for Conversations on Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea, a symposium bridging generations of contemporary Korean art. This event spotlights two groundbreaking artists: Yun Hyong-keun (1928–2007), a pioneering figure of the Dansaekhwa monochromatic painting movement, and contemporary artist Wonwoo Lee, whose thought-provoking installations, sculptures, and performances reinterpret everyday life with humor and irony.

Hyoeun Kim, Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA, will introduce the two speakers: POSTECH professor Jung-Ah Woo, who will speak about the evolution of Korean modern and contemporary art; and Wonwoo Lee, who will discuss his own work. The two lectures will be followed by a moderated Q&A session with Dafna Zur, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University.

(Image: [Top half]  Portrait of Yun Hyong-keun Yun Hyong-keun at his studio, late 1980s © Yun Seong-ryeol. Courtesy of PKM Gallery. [Bottom half] Wonwoo Lee, courtesy of Artist / Photo by Iean Yang <양이언>)

This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP Here. 

About the speakers:

Jung-Ah Woo, is Professor and Head of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology), South Korea, where she also serves as Director of the POSTECH Future Intellectuals Academy. Woo’s research focuses on the conceptual development of contemporary Korean art and its relationship to global contemporaneity. Her most recent book, The Conceptual Turn and the Origins of Contemporaneity in Korean Art (Somyong Publishing, 2022) explores these research topics. A prolific public scholar, she has been a weekly art columnist for The Chosun Ilbo since 2011 and is a board member of the Samsung Foundation of Culture. Woo holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and was a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (2018–2019).

Wonwoo Lee reinterprets fragments from everyday lives through his unique sense of humor and wit, thus interrupting everyday routine and revitalizing mundane subject matters. The imagination that giants cast away anxiety, symbols of luck (clovers, stars, rainbows), trivial conversations, and objects of distorted shapes and meanings work as self-defensive jokes and a sign of warning towards the banal world. Lee is a versatile artist who works across a variety of genres including performance, sculpture, paintings, photography, video, and text. He is a member of ‘…Joketta Project’ and 'MLH,' a multi-genre group. He has been actively exhibiting works at various museums including Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea), Art Sonje Center (Seoul, Korea), Amore Pacific Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea), and Songzhuang Art Gallery (Beijing, China), and has gained significant attention from both local and international curators, critics, collectors, and related art professionals.