Overseas galleries in Seoul showcase lesser-known Korean artists for start of 2024

Overseas galleries in Seoul exhibit new Korean artists, not yet famous internationally. The shows feature fresh faces and diverse works, reflecting the art world's changing landscape.

A view of the exhibition ″Wonderland″ at Lehmann Maupin Seoul [LEHMANN MAUPIN]

A number of major galleries from overseas that opened branches in Seoul in the last few years are showcasing Korean artists in their first exhibitions for the new year. Many of the exhibiting artists are not those who have already gained international fame, but rather, are fresh faces.

One such exhibition is "Nostalgics on realities” at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul in Hannam-dong of Yongsan District, central Seoul, which opened on Friday and runs through March 9. The exhibition was made by a guest curator, Kim Sung-woo, who served as co-artistic director of the 2018 Gwangju Biennale. In 2022, he launched the curatorial space Primary Practice in Seoul.

The participating artists are Jesse Chun, Eugene Jung, Yongju Kwon, Minsun, Hwayeon Nam and Yooyun Yang. The artists, most of whom are in their 30s and 40s, are better known through non-market exhibitions at museums and biennials. But as their works are not actively traded in the market, it is unusual for a commercial gallery to host such an exhibition.

″Fade″ by artist Yooyun Yang, now on view at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul [Thaddaeus Ropac]

"With the exception of artist Yooyun Yang, who has been working with [London-based] Stephen Friedman Gallery since last year, all of the artists have little experience in commercial galleries — even Hwayeon Nam, who participated in [the 2015 main international exhibition and the 2019 Korean pavilion show of] the Venice Biennale,” curator Kim said.

“I don't know much about the commercial area of the art world either. I made the exhibition according to the artistic values and meanings I learned and didn't try to follow the market logic. The gallery recognized that and didn't interfere."

Standing out among the works on display is a new video work by artist Nam. In the video, human hands reaching for colorful fruits and the movement of jaws pecking at them are linked to the operation of a giant food waste treatment plant.

“The artist told me that the days she filmed at the dump, she wasn’t able to eat until the next day,” Kim said.

″Still Life _ sediment″(2023) by artist Minsun, now on view at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul [Thaddaeus Ropac]

Minsun, who is well known for her series of drawings in which she creates human faces out of pencil rubbings on the trunks of trees that line the streets, presents a new series of paintings in this exhibition. For these paintings, she rubbed acrylic paint on photographic paper, which does not absorb paint well. All of the paintings depict an eerie space like that which is left behind when something leaves.

Yang's acrylic paintings on jangji, or traditional handmade Korean paper derived from mulberry tree bark, are also on view. They depict everyday scenes in a strangely unsettling and tense manner, expressing what the artist calls the modern era of anxiety.

This is Thaddaeus Ropac’s second group exhibition of Korean artists, following “Myths of Our Time” from one year ago. Among the three artists who participated in the former exhibition, Zadie Xa and Heemin Chung later became the gallery's new artists. The new gallery artists from this year's exhibition have yet to be announced.

″2022-1988″ by artist Ken Gun Min, now on view at Lehmann Maupin Seoul [LEHMANN MAUPIN]

Meanwhile, at the Hannam-dong gallery of New York-based Lehmann Maupin, a group exhibition of four Korean and Korean American artists, "Wonderland," is running through Feb. 24.

This exhibition was also organized by a guest curator. While the show at Thaddaeus Ropac, curated by a former biennale director, has the feel of a biennale, the exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, curated by Tae Um, who has collaborated with art fairs, likewise has a feel closer to that of an art fair.

The exhibition consists of cityscape sculptures by Hyun Nahm and paintings by Guimi You, Ken Gun Min and Mie Yim. The paintings by each are colorful, fantastical and figurative, though the artists' backgrounds are diverse.

"There are artworks where you can easily infer the race, gender and age of the artist, but I wanted to exhibit together works beyond such clues and give visitors a ‘Wonderland’ experience, free of such categorizations," curator Um said.

Indeed, the colorful and grotesque flora and fauna paintings by New York-based artist Yim, 60, are so vibrant that they lend not to the age of the artist. The work of Los Angeles-based Ken Gun Min, 47, is a visually intense hybrid of fantasy cinematic elements, traditional decorative painting motifs and partial embroidery.

″Forme d’esprit (J267)″ by artist Sang Nam Lee at Perrotin Dosan Park [PERROTIN]

Meanwhile, Paris-based Perrotin Seoul's Dosan Park gallery in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, has chosen a solo exhibition by a Korean artist for its first show of the new year: a mini retrospective of New York-based 70-year-old artist Sang Nam Lee. He is known for his abstract paintings that depict various geometric symbols and icons reminiscent of mechanical civilization, in lyrical pastel hues. This exhibition brings together 13 paintings from the 1990s to 2023. This is the first time Perrotin has held a solo exhibition for a Korean artist in Seoul.

“The forms chosen by Sang Nam Lee, turned into signs, are ‘nomadic beings’ that float constantly between here and there, refusing to settle down,” art historian Chung Yeon-shim, a professor of Hongik University, wrote for the introduction of the exhibition. “The resulting signs are the images he has accumulated over more than four decades. They are more than just shapes; they are compressed landscapes of the artist's mind, revealing the vistas of the cities and sites he has painted, the trajectories and journeys that make up his life.”

A view of Keunmin Lee's solo show ″Realizing Boundaries″ at Peres Projects Berlin [PERES PROJECTS]

As for Peres Projects, which extended and relocated its Seoul branch to Samcheong-dong last year, the German gallery is holding a solo exhibition of up-and-coming artist Keunmin Lee, 41, through Feb. 24 at its Berlin headquarters. His paintings, which look like enlargements of the human body's internal organs, visualize the pathological experiences and hallucinations he had in 2001 due to his borderline personality disorder.

Foreign galleries' decision to highlight Korean artists from the start of the new year is seen by some to be a move to dispel concerns that foreign galleries will neglect to discover new Korean artists.

BY MOON SO-YOUNG [moon.soyoung@joongang.co.kr]