Post-War and Contemporary Korean artists

Every fortnight Artprice provides you with a new or updated ranking in its Alternate-Friday Top Series. This week we present the ten best results for Korean Post-War and Contemporary artists during the first half of 2011.

Korean art enjoys excellent visibility in its own country thanks to a number of flourishing cultural institutions such as the Nam June PAIK museum opened in the name of the eponymous video artist in 2008. Driven by the geographic mutation of the art market, Korean artists have a rapidly growing audience of non-professional buyers.

Top 10 : the ten best results for Korean Post-War and Contemporary artists

Nam-June Paik

Nam June PAIK– one of the first pioneers of Video Art and globally recognized – takes first place in this top 10 with his installation Tv is Kitsch (1996) that sold within its estimated range for $449,750 in May 2011at Christie’s in Hong Kong. This was in fact his second best-ever result auction result for the South Korean artist whose work had not reached beyond $400,000 since 25 November 2007 when his Wright Brothers installation fetched $540,120 at Christie’s Hong Kong.
Nam June Paik generates 31% of his auction revenue in Asia (25% in Hong Kong and 6% in Korea) and Europe accounts for 47% of his auction revenue (UK 25%, France 13%, Germany 5% and Italy 4%) and 65% of his auction transactions.

Lee Ufan
The most expensive Korean artist in 2010 has five auction results in this top 10: three paintings from the end of 1970s were acquired, each for more than $190,000: From Line (1979) sold for the equivalent of $418,500 (on 8 June 2011 at K-Auction Seoul); another painting with the same name but from 1978 fetched $386,400 (From Line, on 29 June 2011 at Seoul Auction Center) and his From Point (1977) sold for $192,750 (on 28 May 2011 at Christie’s Hong Kong). In addition, two more recent paintings by the minimalist painter sold in South Korea this year: Correspondance (1996) ($180,040 on 30 April 2011 at Seoul Auction Center) and Dialogue (2006) which fetched $179,400 on 29 June 2011 at Seoul Auction Center. Although these results are far beneath the six-figure results he obtained in 2007, Ufan LEE remains a hot asset! In 2010 the Lee Ufan Museum opened on the Japanese island Naoshima, and in 2011 he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York (Marking Infinity 24 June – 28 September 2011).
Lee Ufan is mainly popular in Japan and Korea where 86% of his auction transactions take place generated (respectively 53% and 33%).

Kim Chonghak
Chonghak KIM takes the number two spot behind his contemporary Lee Ufan after his Summer of Mt. Seorak fetched $237,600 at K-Auction in Seoul on 16 March 2011. The North Korean also occupies tenth position with a landscape entitled Landscape of Mt. Seorak that fetched the equivalent of $179,400 on 29 June 2011 at Seoul Auction Center. In 2004, Kim Chonghak signed his first auction result at $5,738 for a work entitled Spring at the 20th century Asian art sale organized by Sotheby’s in London (£3,200 on 06 May 2004). In 2007, he crossed the $100,000 threshold and on 15 September of that year his Landscape was acquired for $689,040 at the Seoul Auction Center.
More than 98% of his works change hands in Korea where he is very popular with local collectors. This year, the Korean National Museum of Contemporary Art devoted a retrospective exhibition to his work (29 March – 26 June 2011).

Lee Dai-won
As of April 1993, Dai-won LEE found his way into the sales catalogue of Christie’s New York’s Korean work of art sale with an oil on canvas entitled Tree that fetched $16,000, twice its high estimate. After an excellent 2007 in which Lee signed his best results, including his record at $442,800 for Bukhan Mountain (15 May 2007 at K-Auction in Seoul), in 2011 he returned north of the $200,000 threshold with a work entitled Farm that fetched $202,400 on 29 June 2011 at Seoul Auction Center.

Chon Kyung-Ja
This Korean artist Kyung-Ja CHON takes the ninth spot in this Top 10 ranking with an ink on paper entitled La Javanaise that fetched $176,700 on 8 June 2011 at K-Auction in Seoul. So far, none of her works has ever sold in an auction outside Korea; but her record nevertheless stands at 950,400$ for a drawing entitled Women that was acquired at Seoul Auction Center on 22 July 2007.

Korean art is increasingly present in prestige art sales; in 2009 Contemporary Korean art acquired a definitive foothold in the art news of the world’s major cultural capitals with the highly publicised exhibition Korean Eye: Moon Generation (20 June -13 September 2009) organised in London, the fruit of a collaboration between Korean Eye, Standard Chartered and the Saatchi Gallery. This annual event (in 2010 it called itself Fantastic Ordinary) is once again in the news in 2011 with Korean Eye: Energy and Matter (which closes in 2012).
Nevertheless, compared with the public notoriety already gained by certain Chinese, Japanese and Indian artists, Korean artists are still largely unknown to Western audiences.