Int'l galleries deepen ties with Korean art scene at Frieze Seoul amid slower sales

Visitors take a look around blue-chip dealer Blum's booth during a VIP preview of Frieze Seoul 2024 at COEX in southern Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap

By Park Han-sol

• Published Sep 4, 2024 9:40 PM KST
• Updated Sep 5, 2024 4:44 PM KST

In Korea, a wet monsoon in the summer is followed by another kind of downpour in the fall — a deluge of art.

September ushers in a season where the country is swept up in a whirlwind of art exhibitions and two major biennales, all coinciding with the return of Frieze Seoul.

Now in its third iteration, the four-day mega-fair landed at COEX in Gangnam District, Seoul, Wednesday, drawing 117 galleries from 32 countries and throngs of art lovers from around the world.

High-profile attendees ranged from Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of London’s Serpentine Galleries, and actor Lee Jung-jae to Kim Woong-ki of Global Sae-A Group, the owner of Kim Whanki’s “Universe 5-IV-71 #200,” the most expensive Korean artwork ever auctioned.

This year, the event has doubled down on its focus on Asia-based exhibitors, with 64 percent of the participants operating in or having a presence in the region.

Amid the prolonged market slowdown, transactions involving blockbuster international artworks in the six- and seven-figure range have declined. However, Korean artists have made significant strides, highlighted by PKM Gallery’s sale of a geometric color painting by abstract modernist Yoo Young-kuk for $1.5 million (2 billion won).

Despite reporting notably lower sales compared to previous editions, many international blue-chip dealers with spaces in Seoul emphasized their deepening engagement with the Korean art community beyond the fair itself, demonstrating that their participation extends beyond mere transactions.

“Frieze is a smaller component for us this week, as we have put much of our attention to our Seoul space’s exhibition and the museum shows of our artists,” Pace Gallery’s CEO Marc Glimcher told The Korea Times.

He was referring to the gallery’s headline show, “Correspondence: Lee Ufan and Mark Rothko,” at its Seoul location, as well as two museum exhibitions featuring its creatives: the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset at the Amorepacific Museum of Art and Kylie Manning at Space K.

“The fair is really to highlight these,” he added.

By the end of the VIP preview day, the exhibitor reported sales including a small-scale polished bronze “Love” sculpture by Robert Indiana for $550,000 and a new figurative painting by Manning for $100,000.

A day before Frieze Seoul opened, powerhouse dealer Thaddaeus Ropac announced that Lee Kang-so, regarded as one of Korea’s foremost experimental artists, has joined its roster. The gallery also represents emerging Korean abstractionist Chung Hee-min.

“Since we opened our space (in Yongsan District), on the one hand, we’ve focused on bringing European artists to Korea, but on the other hand, we wanted to really engage with the art world here. So every time I come here, I visit artist studios. That was how I met artists like Chung,” the Austrian gallerist said.

Chung will have her first European show at the exhibitor’s London outpost this October in time for Frieze London.

“As for Lee Kang-so, he was one of the artists that always felt a bit underappreciated internationally,” Ropac continued. “His work spans performance, installations, paintings and sculptures. The huge variety of his work aligns well with Joseph Beuys, who really marks the start of our program in Europe, and what he was doing in the late 1960s and ‘70s. Lee felt like a natural fit for our program.”

The gallery’s opening day sales included a Georg Baselitz painting for 1 million euros and a Lee Kang-so brushwork for 250 million won.

At Hauser & Wirth’s booth, sculptures and canvas works by marquee artists slated to exhibit in Korea took center stage. Featured creatives included Nicolas Party, whose show recently opened at the Hoam Museum of Art, as well as Mark Bradford, who will be at the Amorepacific Museum of Art, and Louise Bourgeois, set to come under the spotlight at the Hoam Museum next year.

“They are cornerstones of our program who are doing exhibitions here,” James Koch, partner and executive director, told The Korea Times. “Building long-term relationships with (local) institutions is important for us, and artists are interested in showing their work here.”

The majority of the dealer’s sales were made to private collectors in Korea and broader Asia, including Party’s “Portrait with Curtains,” which sold for $2.5 million and was the highest sale on the first day of the fair.

One of the standouts at the booth of Paris-headquartered Perrotin, which operates a space in Gangnam District, is “Into the Red,” a striking red silk painting created specifically for Frieze Seoul by rising London-based Korean artist Kim Hun-kyu.

Drawing inspiration from classical Buddhist painting techniques, Kim populates his canvas with a dizzyingly intricate array of animated characters and objects, all rendered in traditional Korean pigments.

While the gallery has been spotlighting veteran Korean artists over the years — such as “dansaekhwa” (monochrome painting) master Park Seo-bo and sculptor Shim Moon-seop — its collaboration with an emerging talent signals another direction in its broadened approach to discovering the country’s creatives, the exhibitor noted.

German dealer Meyer Riegger’s participation in Frieze this year coincides with the opening of its Seoul branch, the gallery’s first outpost in Asia. Co-founder Jochen Meyer cited Korea’s strong art history, its gallery system that is “close to the Western model” and the lack of censorship as elements contributing to the city’s enormous potential for contemporary art.

Inaugurating its Seoul space is a solo exhibition featuring recent works by veteran German artist Horst Antes. At its fair booth, the gallery is showcasing a 1970 painting by Antes to foster a dialogue between his past and present pieces, Meyer remarked.

And Beijing-based Tang Contemporary Art is staging a compelling thematic presentation that positions the rising Korean art star Woo Kuk-won in conversation with Chinese creatives like Ai Weiwei and Yue Min-jin, who offer a visceral commentary on today’s social climate.

The showcase features Zhao Zhao’s “Spread,” a piece made from cotton that evokes his youth during a period of forced labor in China’s Xinjiang. Also highlighted is Li Wei’s unsettling hyperrealist sculpture, which depicts six world leaders — Obama, Putin, Merkel, and others— as seven-year-olds lounging on a sofa.

This year’s Frieze Masters section, dedicated to art from the Middle Ages to 20th-century masterpieces, has increased the presence of galleries showing historical Asian art.

Asia Art Center, based in Taipei and Beijing, has mounted a solo presentation of Taiwan’s most celebrated sculptor Ju Ming. The display features copper sculptures from his signature “Tai Chi Series” — boxy metal pieces in dynamic postures inspired by the martial art.

“I think this is a great chance for galleries and collectors to see more master artists from Asia, because it’s really a rare opportunity we can promote these figures in an international fair,” said Harvey Liu, the gallery’s senior marketing and sales specialist.

Unlike participation in events like Frieze New York or Art Basel in Basel, which often entails hefty shipping and operational costs for Asian galleries, Frieze Seoul provides an opportunity to globally spotlight regional masters closer to home, he added.