Art takes over Seoul as Frieze, Kiaf approach
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Gagosian Gallery also returns to Seoul for the Frieze art week with a pop-up exhibition at APMA Cabinet, located on the ground floor of the Amorepacific building. This year, the megasized gallery is showing new paintings and sculptures by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami at the exhibition "Seoul, Kawaii Summer Vacation."
Coming down south of the Han River, there is G Gallery in Cheongdam-dong where fabric installation artist Woo Han-han, winner of the inaugural Frieze Artist Award, made a comeback with more developed works for the exhibition "Poomse."
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Late August through early September has become the busiest time of the year in the art scene here, at least since the arrival of Frieze Seoul three years ago.
This year marks the fourth edition of the global art fair and its fourth collaboration with Kiaf Seoul. The following is a selection of museum and gallery exhibitions taking place across the capital and Greater Seoul area concurrently with the fairs.
North of the Han River
American artist Mark Bradford grounds his practice in his identity and experiences as a gay Black man from an urban working-class background. Spending his childhood in his mother’s hair salon, he grew up surrounded by diverse communities, and the seeds of the stories he heard there have turned into art, often on a monumental scale.
“I like to work in a big scale. I like to fall into and get lost, and I like to struggle with edges,” the artist said in Seoul, speaking on his style. The exhibition “Mark Bradford: Keep Walking” at Amorepacific Museum of Art brings together around 40 of Bradford's works, spanning two decades of his career.
Gagosian Gallery also returns to Seoul for the Frieze art week with a pop-up exhibition at APMA Cabinet, located on the ground floor of the Amorepacific building. This year, the megasized gallery is showing new paintings and sculptures by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami at the exhibition “Seoul, Kawaii Summer Vacation.”
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in Samcheong-dong, Seoul, is holding the first retrospective of Kim Tschang-yeul since his death in 2021. The exhibition is a comprehensive chronicle of the work of the artist known for waterdrop paintings, from his early works to those from his New York and Paris periods, as well as his late works.
Gallery Hyundai, located near the state museum, is running two exhibitions: “Not I, Not I, but the Wind That Blows Through Me,” a two-person exhibition of Lee Kang-seung and Candice Lin, and “One After the Other,” which shows Kim Min-jung’s new “Zip” series featuring burnt "hanji" — traditional Korean mulberry paper — layered in zigzag shapes that merge and harmonize two heterogeneous elements.
This year’s Seoul Mediacity Biennale at Seoul Museum of Art explores the role of spiritual experiences in the development of modern and contemporary art with the theme "Seance: Technology of the Spirit," featuring 49 artists and collectives.
“We approach it not as an endorsement of any particular religions, any particular spiritual practices, but as researchers,” said Anton Vidokle, co-director of the biennale together with Hallie Ayres and Lukas Brasiskis, on the theme of the biennale's 13th edition.
The city museum is collaborating with Frieze Seoul for a series of screenings on the museum rooftop as part of the Frieze Film program from Sept. 1 to 4 that will include films such as "Portal" by Korean-Danish artist Jane Jin Kaisen.
Female artists who identify as LGBTQ+ have long been overlooked in the Korean art scene, in comparison with their male counterparts.
For the first time, Art Sonje Center’s exhibition curated by Kim Sun-jung, “Off-site 2: Eleven Episodes,” brings the next generation of Korean female and genderqueer artists to the fore not only at the museum, but also at Kukje Gallery and the art space Together Together. The participating artists are younger than 37 years old.
"The female queer artists have gotten less attention as they were reluctant to reveal themselves in public shows in Korea. But younger artists are becoming more open to communicating with audiences through art," Kim said on Thursday.
The participating artists, comprising women and queer voices, belong to a generation shaped by Korea’s regional and gender dynamics, exposed to both the internet and virtual worlds as well as resistant subcultures and mainstream pop culture, according to the museum.
The private museum will also open Argentine Peruvian artist Adrian Villar Rojas’ first solo exhibition “Adrian Villar Rojas: The Language of the Enemy” on Wednesday, transforming the museum building into a sculptural ecosystem.
For the artist, the museum is reimagined not as a site of preservation, but of decomposition, mutation and inheritance — by nonhuman and synthetic agents alike.
Louise Bourgeois, one of the most influential artists of the past century, is featured at Kukje Gallery's exhibition “Louise Bourgeois: Rocking to Infinity,” which will have a VIP opening Sept. 2.
Meanwhile, Hoam Museum of Art in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, about an hour's drive south of Seoul, is hosting Korea's first large-scale museum show of Bourgeois in 25 years. “Louise Bourgeois: The Evanescent and the Eternal” reveals the artist’s psyche through more than 110 works selected from different periods in the artist's career.
The exhibition that has toured countries across the Asia-Pacific conveys the pain and growth the artist experienced as a young girl, a wife and an artist who underwent psychoanalysis for 33 years, the museum noted on the exhibition.
“For Louise Bourgeois, each work is an expression of her emotions. I hope visitors will not only feel those emotions, but also reflect on how they resonate with universal and contemporary language, which is the most important purpose of the exhibition,” said Kim Sung-won, deputy director of the museum, at the press opening Wednesday.
Globally rising Korean artist Lee Jin-ju, whose painting technique is rooted in traditional East Asian painting, has unveiled her new works at Arario Gallery. Revealing the abyss of the artist’s unconscious, her paintings provoke uncanny feelings in viewers.
At Lehmann Maupin, New York–based artist Teresita Fernandez makes her debut in Seoul at the exhibition “Liquid Horizon,” where she shows a glazed ceramic wall installation and luminous sculptural panels that evoke watery realms, extending her ongoing interest in subterranean landscapes.
“So it can be a beautiful thing, it can be an image that maybe looks like a landscape. … It can also be the social and political connotations that arise in us psychologically when we imagine the idea of a place — and it's all of those things at the same time,” the artist said about her works at the exhibition on Tuesday.
Frieze House Seoul, the newly opened space in the central Jangchung-dong area of Seoul, will show the inaugural exhibition “UnHouse,” curated by Kim Jae-seok and directed by Seoul-based art critic Andy St. Louis.
The exhibition reimagines the home — one of the most intimate yet political spaces — through an LGBTQ+ frame, bringing together internationally acclaimed artists and emerging Korean voices.
South of the Han River
Coming down south of the Han River, there is G Gallery in Cheongdam-dong where fabric installation artist Woo Han-han, winner of the inaugural Frieze Artist Award, made a comeback with more developed works for the exhibition “Poomse.”
The title is a Korean word that refers to the Korean martial arts postures symbolizing balance and discipline.
Following the well-received exhibition that opened in June at Museum San in Gangwon Province, British sculptor Antony Gormley, who investigates the human body through the language of sculpture, will have the twin exhibition "Inextricable" at White Cube Seoul and Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul, as the two major galleries collaborate on the show.
The galleries' collaboration will create a dialogue across their respective spaces, offering visitors a broader perspective on the artist's exploration of the human body, space and presence.
White Cube Seoul will present six works inside and outside the gallery space, including Gormley’s ongoing "Blockworks," "Bunker" and "Beamer" sculptural series, while Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul will show sculptures from the artist’s "Extended Strapworks," "Cast Knotworks" and "Open Blockwork" series with his drawings.
Songeun Art Space is running a panorama exhibition as part of the Korean artist showcase initiative. The group show of eight artists highlights their distinct practices, ranging from painting and sculpture to installation, photography and video.
Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul kick off Wednesday at Coex in southern Seoul, running through Sept. 6 and 7, respectively. A single ticket allows admission to both fairs, which will see the participation of some 300 galleries from across the globe.
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