DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Awards │ DOOSAN Art Center DOOSAN Gallery

Mok-Yon Yoo uses various mediums including installation, photography and drawing to work diversely across the social and individual domains and to expand the artistic realm. His art practice with its own language endlessly strives for new artistic alternatives between the real and the virtual world, by demonstrating the possibility of reconciliation between the severed relationships between individuals through his audience-participatory performances, or his guidebook to surviving the individualistic society.

Mok-Yon Yoo, Mokyon Pocha, 2012, Wood, plywood, shopping cart, cooking utensils, Dimensions variable

Mok-Yon Yoo, Hidden Kitchen, 2014, Custom made bag, cooking utensils, camera, radio, retort curry, instant rice, Dimensions variable

Education

2008
M.F.A. Photography, Chung-ang University, Seoul, KR

Solo Exhibition

2015
An Illustrated Guide to Urban Adventure, Project Space SARUBIA, Seoul, KR

Jury's Statement

The jury for the Fine Art category of the 6th DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Awards in 2015 consisted of three members including Sungwon Kim, Geun-jun Lim and Seonryeong Cho. The 9 final candidates for screening were artists of different ages and various styles of artmaking, from Korean painting, to drawing, Western painting, video, animation, installation and project-based works. While all the artists demonstrated astounding talent and thus made the evaluation process difficult, the three finalists Jungsuck Kang, Min Oh, and Mok-Yon Yoo were chosen for their thriving art practices of great diversity and depth, and their ability to cast a contemporary outlook on Korean contemporary art.

Born in 1984, 1975 and 1978 respectively, Kang, Oh and Yoo were relatively a little older than the three finalists of last year, Jungju An (1979), Yunsung Lee (1985), and Dongju Kang (1988). However, age was not taken as a particular consideration as long as it remained in the pre-requisite range, because some artists demonstrate their artistic talent relatively late in their life while some have a mature practice at an early age.

With 2 solo exhibitions and participation in numerous sensational special exhibitions, Kang was highly praised as a leader of new trends in Korean contemporary art with his active involvement in youth art collectives and new alternative spaces. He was commended for being “one of the most problematic figures in the ‘generational gap changes’ taking over the art world in Seoul in 2015” and an artist who “interprets the everyday life of the lethargic youth generation, captured from the perspective of the all-pervading smartphone, as a schizophrenic tendency.” Kang was also applauded for his work which “demonstrates an attitude to reject the phenomenon of generation itself by affirming the state of alienation.”

Min Oh majored in music, studied in the US, and works in Europe. Although relatively less known in Korea, her last few exhibitions have demonstrated her exquisite sense of rhythm and understanding of her medium. In Oh’s work, “the elaborate integration of concise gesture, repetitive pattern, minimal expression and subtle sound produces works that are both like a sacred ritual and a light play”. Oh was highly regarded for her “works in which the visual mechanisms call forth the aural element..., and the aural visual mechanisms and information are controlled to create an experience of acoustic image and movement.”

An artist highly-engaged in project-based works, Mok-Yon Yoo was commended for his unique oeuvre with a wide range of involvements. Yoo works from “a slightly different perspective from the objective of ‘communication between people’ often directed at in audience-participatory works”. He is an artist who “strives to construct a new point of meeting between the structure of system and particular experience of the individual.” The jury also noted that Yoo “has an outstanding talent in visualizing his concept and working with various materials, and above all, has an open attitude which doesn’t suggest predictable conclusions.”

Also brought up in the evaluation process was that the previous awardees really took off in their artistic careers upon receiving the DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Awards, and that this demonstrates the status and prestige of the award. DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Awards will hopefully continue to inspire Korean artists in their art practice through its long-term support.

Jury Sungwon Kim, Geun-jun Lim, Seonryeong Cho