Hanwha Foundation to support up-and-coming artists in New York

*This content was translated by AI.

The Hanwha Cultural Foundation will hold the Michael Ju solo exhibition "Sweat Models 1991-2026" from February 20 to April 18 at "Space Zero One" in New York.

Space Zero One, which opened in Tribeca, New York, in November last year, is a global art support platform established by the Hanwha Cultural Foundation as a mission to discover and support Shinjin artists. The foundation plans to lay the foundation for emerging artists to continue and expand their work internationally through Space Zero One and to establish a long-term ecosystem to incubate contemporary Korean art on the world stage.

While the opening exhibition "Contours of Zero" highlighted emerging artists and presented the direction of zero-one, the selection of Michael Ju as the first exhibition in 2026 is a strategy to further expand the mission of zero-one through intergenerational experiments and exchanges. Michael Ju is a second-generation Korean-American born in New York who has been expanding the boundaries of art by exploring the intersection of materials, systems, bodies and information across various media such as sculpture, installation, and video for more than 30 years. Through Michael Zhu's artistic trajectory, who received international attention by participating in the Venice Biennale in 2001, as a Korean diaspora writer, we will remind the importance of a platform that connects local artists to the world stage and present it as a specific growth reference for the zero-one goal of "global expansion of emerging Korean artists."

This exhibition "Sweat Models" looks at the artist's overall work journey from Michael Ju's early work to new work. It follows the trajectory of the early days from the 1990s and shows how an artist's artistic practice is accumulated and expanded in time. The exhibition consists of works produced or conceived in the 1990s that have not been disclosed for a long time or that have been newly implemented through this opportunity. Works that were in contact with contemporary major issues, such as the AIDS crisis and the rapid spread of information technology, extend from today's point of view beyond just past records to current ongoing questions.

The exhibition title "Sweat Models" is the name of a representative work that condenses the problem consciousness of "measurement" and "system" that Michael has repeatedly explored since the 1990s. In addition, Michael's works explore the human body, its vulnerability, and the system surrounding the body without directly describing the body.

"Space Zero One is a space that supports emerging artists to start from a local context and expand to the global stage," said Hanwha Cultural Foundation, which spoke to this newspaper by phone. We will continue to expand our mission through exhibitions and exchanges across generations and regions," he said.

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*This content was translated by AI.