2026-04-17 ~ 2026-08-30
Seoul MMCA Space Kids
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This educational exhibition presents contemporary artworks with ongoing programs, inviting visitors to understand and explore the creative process through the organic cycle of art, creation, failure, iteration, and self-efficacy.
Period
2026-04-17 ~ 2026-08-30
Organized by/Supported by
MMCA
Venue
Admission
0
2025-05-01 ~ 2026-05-31
Seoul 1F Gallery1 / B1 Gallery2
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CHOI Wook-kyung(1940-1985), ‹Unfinished Story›, 1977, Colored pencil and crayon on paper, 147×266cm.
PARK Seo-Bo(1931-2023), ‹Ecriture No. 43-78-79-81›, 1981, Oil paint and graphite on cotton, 193.5×259.5cm.
QUAC Insik(1919-1988), ‹Work›, 1962, Glass on panel, 72×102cm.
PARK Hyunki(1942-2000), ‹Untitled›, 1979, Stone(14pieces) and monitor(1piece), 120×260×260cm.
KO Younghoon(1952-), ‹Stone Book›, 1985, Acrylic paint on book leaves, 142×98cm.
OH Yoon(1946-1986), ‹Vindictive Spirits›, 1984, Oil paint on canvas, 69×462cm.
KANG Ikjoong(1960-), ‹Sam-ra-man-sang›, 1984 - 2014, Mixed media and object on panel, collage, chrome-plated on copper, Variable installation (Pensive Bodhisattva: 92×33×33, panels: 50×50×10cm(400)).
Kimsooja(1957-), ‹Bottari Truck - Migrateurs›, 2007, Single-channel video, color, silent, 9 min. 17 sec. (loop)
KIM Beom(1963-), ‹Untitled-Intimate Suffering#12›, 2012, Acrylic paint on canvas, 397×286cm.
YANG Haegue(1971-), ‹Female Natives›, 2010, Clothing racks, casters, bulbs, cable, artificial plants, bells, cord, rope, metal chain, knitting yarn, dried ginger, metal ring, aluminum reflector, tin can, cane ball, seashells, papier mâché, dried ginseng, painted wood ball, cosmetic sponge, dried tree-ear mushroom, fringe, hair roller, metal clamp, glass beads and sequin patch, 1. 185×106×106cm, 2. 192×123×150cm, 3. 197×103×103cm, 4. 191×84×84cm, 5. 235×105×105cm, 6. 180×110×110
MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho(2009-), ‹News from Nowhere›, 2011 - 2012, Two-channel video, objects, documents , Dimensions variable installation
KIM Ayoung(1979-), ‹Porosity Valley 2: Tricksters'plot›, 2019, Two-channel video, color, sound, 23min. 4sec.
This exhibition is the first permanent exhibition since the opening of the Seoul branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in 2013. Since beginning its acquisition activities with its original opening in 1969, MMCA has collected and researched a body of significant artwork and archival materials with a focus on art history and contemporary art trends spanning more than 50 years. Out of the museum’s collection of around 11,800 pieces, this exhibition presents about 90 representative works of Korean contemporary art from the period between the 1960s and 2010s. With a selection based on subtopics representative of key themes in Korean contemporary art history, such as abstraction, experimentation, figuration, hybridity, concepts, and documentary approaches, it offers viewers a multilayered introduction to currents in Korean contemporary art through different eras.
Korean contemporary art has undergone dynamic changes in response to Korea’s own unique social situation, cultural upheavals, transformations in media, and its organic relationships with international art produced around the same time. The exhibition begins in Gallery 1, which explores representative works of Korean contemporary art from the period between the 1960s and 1980s: examples of Korean abstract art, which was created in the name of modernity and the avant-garde; works of experimental art, which expanded aesthetic boundaries based on the nature of objects and actions; and figurative and Minjung art works that sought to examine art in the context of life. Gallery 2 showcases major works of Korean contemporary art from the 1990s to the 2010s: key collection works by Korean artists who began to receive major attention from the international contemporary art scene in the context of pluralization and globalization; conceptual works centered on objects and language; and attempts at different perceptions of reality in the context of documentary and fiction.
As viewers explore a selection of major collection works representative of the complex topography of Korean contemporary art, they will be able
to grasp how art has changed and unfolded in Korea’s social context. We also look forward to this exhibition serving as an opportunity to reflect on the particularity and universality of Korean contemporary art as something that has developed in a significant relationship with larger currents in international art.
※ KIM Whanki's Echo 19-II-73#307(1973), PARK Saengkwang's Shamanism 3(1980) are scheduled to be replaced to KIM Whanki's Moonlight in Summer (1961), PARK Saengkwang's Shamanism 16 (1985) after September 7, 2025, due to their inclusion in Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared (NMAA).
※ KIM Whanki’s Moonlight in Summer (1961) will be replaced with 4-VI-69 #65 (1969) from October 22, 2025, for conservation reasons and inclusion in international touring exhibitions.
In addition, PARK Suk-won’s Mutation-Correspondance (1972) will not be on view after October 22, 2025, and CHUNG Seoyoung’s The Bike Light (2007) and LEE Bul’s Cyborg W5 (1999) will not be on view after October 31, 2025.
2026-04-01 ~ 2026-12-06
Seoul B1, Multi Project Hall
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“A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better mod - el than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch.” ― Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
At a time when artificial intelligence is expected to carry out computations and respond instantaneously, this project names those who observe the world over long durations—certain individuals, artists, and children—as “detectives.” Today, few remain who scrutinize someone else closely and puzzle over the traces they leave behind, apart from detectives. Such tenacious observation is not merely about the gathering of information. In fact, it carries within it a complex gaze: the belief that secrets and truths may be uncovered; the resolve to sustain a fundamental faith in humanity even while being suspicious of another human being; and the desire to foresee an approaching future through the act of tracing the past.
The detectives invoked in this year’s MMCA Performing Arts: Deep Time (the literal translation of the Korean title is “Detective’s Time”) diverge slightly from classical sleuths and are entangled in two distinct currents of change, the first of which is the collapse of the detective’s “sense of privilege.” To begin, an external, privileged position is no longer possible in this field of work. So too is the belief that an individual can definitively solve complex problems, or firmly define oneself as the agent of such problem-solving. In today’s world, there is no single fixed truth—no specific perpetrator, no definitive answer—and the instability of identity, perpetually subject to fluctuation, transforms the position and perspective of the “detective” into something fundamentally different from before. Second, observation and inference are not only visual and logical acts, but thoroughly bodily and temporal ones as well. To watch another person deeply demands an immense amount of time and physical effort. Excessive devotion, endurance, and the repetition of near-identical gestures gradually alter the tempo of the detective’s own life, slowing it dramatically beyond the object of observation. Within this deepened time, everyday trivial things—such as the path of sunlight, a strand of hair on someone, and the sound of one’s own breathing—take on a different meaning. “Deep and slow” time, which is distinct from mechanical speed and unique to human experience, is the theme of this year’s MMCA Performing Arts series.
I have rendered this title in English as “Deep Time.” The concept, proposed by a geologist observing the stratified formations of Scotland, refers to vast geological time beyond the scale of human measure—a temporality that refuses fixation and completion, that is itself the very process of ceaseless change and flow. I would like to place this “long and thick” time in contrast with the “deep learning” of artificial intelligence, which acquires data to minimize error and swiftly produce optimal answers in a rigorously goal-oriented manner. Deep time is a temporality approaching the infinite; yet within its strata, traces of transformation and energy accumulate layer upon layer. This is also why deep time is interested not only in artists but also in children; the temporal strata of children have not yet fully hardened. Indeed, responsive to external influence, children retain the capacity to transform themselves and to rise anew, demonstrating a plasticity. In this sense, the creative observation of children and the inexhaustible labor of artists harbor the potential to unsettle fixed strata and established orders.
Ultimately, the detective of MMCA Performing Arts does not pursue fixed truths or definitive outcomes. Rather, within deep time, this detective reveals other meanings through rupture, expansion, and accumulation. As a result, their work may be understood as contemporary art’s response to the instantaneous computation (answers)—that is, accelerated agency—of artificial intelligence. Intriguingly, the detective’s method of problem-solving (induction–abduction–deduction) and the response-generating mechanisms of a large language model (LLM)—massive-scale induction and deduction through chains of thought—seem to share a similar logical structure. However, the time of goal-oriented artificial intelligence externalizes fatigue through a disembodied, non-corporeal mode of observation. A detective’s time, by contrast, begins only after leaving the scene of the event: it is a time of reflection, of mentally and emotionally reconstructing what has already occurred, and of patient waiting until even the most trivial traces acquire meaning. It resembles a re-viewing that suddenly arises one night after leaving the museum or the theater. This re-viewing reconfigures the viewer’s thoughts and emotions. Thus, the detective, while walking, reconstructs time—gazing at mountains, trees, machines, the sky, the cosmos. In this process, the detective is not merely a machine that produces answers, but a being who weaves relations among entities in the interstices of events—or at times, an agent who fails to come up with any answers. In that deep delay, the detective wrestles with the self, persists in response, and tails the arrow of time.
The act of prolonged observation can never be neutral. As demonstrated by Christopher Nolan’s film Following, which serves as a bridge between Chapter I and Chapter II of MMCA Performing Arts: Deep Time, observation that appears purposeless intervenes in the world of its object, shaping new relations and materialities between the two, that is, between the observer and the observed. Each draws the other into their own temporality; time, like an index, gradually leaves its traces upon bodies and objects. Intense immersion displaces both the observer and the observed from their original positions, transforming them in unforeseen ways. Between plasticity and permanent transformation, fierce longing and irreversible creep emerge. It is precisely at this threshold that the deep time accumulated in Chapter I, “observation and pursuit,” advances into Chapter II, “Slow Creep .”
The following is my explanation... well, my... my account of... well, what happened.
— Following (1998), directed by Christopher Nolan
※ Notes
- Reservations are required for all programs.
- Programs are available to reserve through [Exhibition Tickets]-[Performing Arts].
- Please refer to [Event] page for information on each part’s program.
- Reservations open two weeks before the program starts. (If the reservation opening date falls on a holiday, it will open on the weekday before.)
- The date and subject of the program may change.
2026-03-20 ~ 2026-06-28
Seoul B1 Gallery 3, 4, 5 / 2F MMCA Studio / B1 Seoul Box
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‹The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living›, 1991, Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution, 217 × 542 × 180 cm. Private Collection. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2026. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates
‹For the Love of God›, 2007, Platinum, diamonds and human teeth, 17.1 × 12.7 × 19 cm. Private Collection. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2026. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates
‹A Thousand Years›, 1990, Glass, steel, silicone rubber, painted MDF, insect-o-cutor, cow’s head, blood, flies, maggots, metal dishes, cotton wool, sugar and water, 207.5 × 400 × 215 cm. Private Collection. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2026. Photographed by Roger Wooldridge
‹Spot Painting›, 1986, Household gloss on board, 243.8 × 365.8 cm. Private Collection. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2026. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates
‹The Fragility of Love›, 2000, Painted MDF, steel, knives, air blower and beach ball, 74.5 × 249.5 × 249.5 cm. Private Collection. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2026. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates
‹Beautiful Exploding Hell Bent Mayhem and Madness Vortex of Rainbows and Death Volcano Painting›, 1999, Household gloss on canvas with electric motor, Dia 365.8 cm. Private Collection. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2026. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates
‹Sinner›, 1988, Glass, faced particleboard, beech, plastic, aluminium, anatomical model, scalpels and pharmaceutical packaging, 137.2 × 101.6 × 22.9 cm. Private Collection. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2026. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates
‹Myth›, 2010, Painted bronze, 359 × 280 × 80.8 cm. Private Collection. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2026. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates
The MMCA will present the first major solo exhibition in Asia of the work of the internationally acclaimed British artist, Damien Hirst (b. 1965). The exhibition features over 50 works spanning the artist’s career. Featuring installations, sculptures and paintings, many of which have not been seen in Asia before, the exhibition includes some of Hirst’s most iconic series, including Natural History (formaldehyde sculptures), Spin Paintings, Medicine Cabinets, Cherry Blossoms, and Spot and Butterfly Paintings. The exhibition charts the emergence of Hirst’s most famous themes. Throughout his career, Hirst has reflected on the complex relationships between beauty, religion, science, life and death.
Period
2026-03-20 ~ 2026-06-28
Organized by/Supported by
Sponsored by Hanmi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. , Hanmi Science Co., Ltd.
Venue
Admission
8,000won