Jury’s Statement

The selection and evaluation system of the 4th DOOSAN Artist Award has been revised. In place of the existing system of separate nominating and judging committees, three art professionals will now simultaneously undertake nominating and judging duties. The 4th DOOSAN Artist Award will proceed under the direction of Geun-jun Lim, Yunah Jung, and Sung-won Kim. Each member of the three-person committee will nominate three artist candidates, and the committee will then select three finalists from the nine candidates. The nine-artist candidate pool will be nominated according to each committee member’s individual critical standards, and will be composed of artists under the age of forty who have actively pursued exhibition opportunities in the domestic and international art scenes during the period from 2012 to the first half of 2013.  

This comprehensive change to the DOOSAN Artist Award review system is intended to allow the DOOSAN Artist Award to more aggressively discover the next generation of promising artists; to become a more competitive artist award; and to create a more intensive synergy for DOOSAN’s activities in support of the arts. In line with the preceding goals, the DOOSAN Artist Award’s review criteria will now put further emphasis on discovering the next generation of promising artists; shed traditional genre classifications; inclusively embrace the full range of art genres; and, above all, give due regard to the experimentation and creativity that will lead the future direction of contemporary art.

 The three artist finalists selected for the 4th DOOSAN Artist Award are Na Kim, Jeamin Cha, and Minae Kim. At the outset, in comparison with prior years, the age group of the finalists has become younger. Although Minae Kim (b. 1981), Na Kim (b. 1979), and Jeamin Cha (b. 1986) are all young artists in their late 20s or early 30s, their works and exhibition activities reflect a depth of quantity, high level of realization, and active progression that match, or even surpass, those of more established artists. Another shift in this year’s award involves the individual scopes of the three artists’ art practices. Na Kim is a graphic designer with excellent taste, an artist who has already established a solid reputation with regard to her ability; and her creative ideas shatter the traditional boundary between graphic design and art. Although Jeamin Cha also majored in fine art, she has attempted to create an exquisite connection between performance and video, and has produced artworks that are experimental and innovative with regard to their contents and technical execution. Minae Kim is a sculptor. Recently, “sculptors” have become a rarity; nevertheless, she has established herself as a young sculptor who, while extending the traditional concept of sculpture, strives to interpret reality and provoke its transformation, rather than simply representing it. The deconstructive attitude towards rigid genres, experimental concepts, and defiant spirits of these three artists parallel the issues and the diversity of subjects that they deal with, and collectively propose an alternative direction for contemporary art.

Beginning with this 4th edition, the DOOSAN Artist Award, together with the artists Na Kim, Minae Kim, and Jeamin Cha, hopes to experiment with new energies, challenges, and progressiveness, and to become the most influential art award in the Korean art scene. Additionally, for these three artists, we are eagerly awaiting excellent artworks that will surpass our expectations in their upcoming solo shows in Seoul and New York.

_Geun-jun Lim, Yunah Jung, Sung-won Kim