[Seoul National University Museum of Art] How Do Images of Everyday Life Speak to Us?

Featured artists: Kwon Ki-soo, Kwon Osang, Kim Hwa-hyun, Noh Jun, Park Grim, Seo Gi-hwan, Son Dong-hyun, Shin Hak-chul, Aokizi, Artnom, Lee Dongi, Lee Won-woo, Lee Yun-sung, Ham Do-ha

In the mid-20th century, Pop Art actively brought images from advertising, products, comics, and mass media into the realm of art. As mass-produced and mass-consumed images and everyday objects became subjects for art, the relationship between art and popular culture underwent significant changes. Since then, as mass media and consumer culture have grown rapidly and new media have emerged, the kinds of images we encounter in daily life and the ways we receive them have continued to change.

These changes have also appeared in various ways in Korean contemporary art. Industrialization and the formation of a mass-consumer society, the spread of television and advertising, the growth of comics and character culture, and the emergence of the internet and digital media provided artists with new images and subject matter. Artists have reflected the society and culture of their times in their work by borrowing these images directly, combining different images, or transforming familiar forms into something unfamiliar.

“Everyday Images: How Do They Speak to Us?” at the Seoul National University Museum of Art examines how elements of ‘pop’ have appeared and evolved in Korean contemporary art through these developments. Rather than limiting Korean Pop Art to a particular style or group of artists, this exhibition explores the diverse ways in which popular culture and everyday images have related to art. It presents a range of works, from those that critically use images from mass media and consumer society to the appropriation of comics and characters, the combination of traditional painting and popular-culture imagery, and images produced and circulated in today's digital environment.

The phrase ‘How Do They Speak to Us?’ in the exhibition title asks what these everyday images convey to us, and how, when they become works of art. Like advertisements intended to sell products, comics that tell stories, and characters consumed repeatedly, everyday images speak to us in their own ways. Artists select and transform these visual images, separating them from their original purposes and contexts, sometimes making them objects of criticism or giving them new meaning. When viewers encounter familiar everyday images again in artworks, they recognize where those images originally came from and construct a variety of meanings through the works.

We hope this exhibition offers an opportunity both to examine how pop imagery has evolved in Korean contemporary art and to reconsider how the everyday images we encounter and consume each day speak to us.

1) Exhibition tour with the curator 2026. 9. 30.(Wed), 10. 28.(Wed) 14:00-15:00

2) Exhibition-related lectures

2026.10.2.(Fri) 14:00-16:00 “Where Did Korean Pop Art Begin?” - Yoon Jin-sup (art criticism)

2026.10.9.(Fri) 14:00-16:00 “Korean Art and Popular Culture in the 1990s: Mass Media, Kitsch, and Everyday Images” - Ki Hye-kyung (Hongik University)

2026.10.16.(Fri)14:00-16:00 “Pop After Pop Art: Korean Contemporary Art and Popular Culture” - Ahn Hyun-jung (art criticism)