1993
Juror’s statement
The Korea Arts Foundation of America’s second annual Award for the Visual Arts firmly establishes the prestige and effectiveness of the organization’s program.
Entries submitted from throughout the United States for consideration by the program’s three-person jury were exceptionally high in quality. The works of virtually all the applicants clearly reflected the artists’ keen professionalism and clear familiarity with the aesthetic and theoretical issues facing the increasingly global art world of the 1990s. The task of narrowing the field to three or four most accomplished artists was not easy; and selecting a single awardee was downright difficult – not because of dissension among the jurors but rather because of our agreement that the final candidates were all such strong contenders. Among our final choices were the haunting and enigmatic performance/ installation works of Mary Ann Kim Rich; Chang Woo Lee’s moving and compassionate photographs documenting the lives of homeless people, who have become so much a part of urban America; and Sung Hee Hahn’s constructions, incorporating old Korean photographs, exploring issues of cultural identity.
In the end, this year’s award was given to an outstanding sculptor, Sook Jin Jo, who uses junk-old doors, scrap plywood panels, and other discarded materials – scavenged from demolition sites and the trash piles of Brooklyn, New York, where she lives and works. She combines such detritus of daily life into dramatic, large-scale assemblages, engaging that found debris so as to bring out what she describes as the “inner life” of her materials. Her art thus resembles forms of some modern Western art, but art infused with a distinctly Asian philosophy and spiritual description of the nature of the material world.
Awardee Sook Jin Jo, the excellent artists whose work has earned them honorable mention, and the many artists who submitted their works for consideration to this year’s competition, have brought distinction to themselves, their achievement, and to the Korea Arts Foundation of America.
Jurors
Henry Hopkins: director Fred Weismann collection, Chair UCLA Art dept.
Howard Fox : curator LACMA
Kerry Brougher : curator emeritus Smithsonian.
Biography
New York-based artist Sook Jin Jo is a multidisciplinary artist. Since 1985, she has produced drawings, collages, sculptural assemblages, performances, photographs, videos, installations, public works and architecture. Jo has created nearly 50 site-specific installations globally and has been the subject of 35 solo exhibitions, including the “Walter Gropius Master Artist Series”, Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia (2011); A project collaboration with Immigrants from Latin America, Tenement Museum, New York (2009); “A Mid-Career Survey of the Work of Sook Jin Jo” at the Arko Art Center, Seoul (2007) and over 100 group exhibitions, including the “Lodz Biennale,” Poland; the “Gwangju Biennale,” Korea; Changwon Sculpture Biennale, Korea; Maier Museum of Art, Virginia; and “SeMA GOLD 2014” Seoul Museum of Art, Korea.
She is a recipient of many commissions, awards, fellowships, including a commission from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs; a Master Artist in Residence, Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida; Örebro AiR Fellowship in Sweden; the iaab Fellowship (Christoph Merian Stifung Foundation) in Switzerland; the Hachonghyun Foundation Artist Award in Korea; KAFA Award in California; a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in New York; the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil; and a Socrates Sculpture Park Artist Fellowship in New York.
Jo’s works can be seen in numerous public collections, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea; the Seoul Museum of Art; the LA Metro Detention Center in California; the Erie Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia; the Housatonic Museum of Art in Connecticut; the Arko Art Center in Korea; Gyeonggi Museum of Art in Korea; Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai; and the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Miami.
Recently she built “Art House”, a chapel, in Nicaragua (2018) and installed an outdoor piece in collaboration with those with special needs in Sweden(2019).
Jo has received two MFA’s: one from Hong-Ik University, Korea, and one from Pratt Institute, New York.