Lifestyle - The Korea Times

Seoul art fairs affirm global potential as Kiaf, Frieze close

The country's two largest art fairs — Kiaf Seoul and Frieze Seoul — concluded over the weekend, drawing a substantial crowd of art enthusiasts and reaffirming their potential to become pivotal art events beyond Asia. During the festival period, which ran Wednesday to Sunday with Frieze closing one day earlier, approximately 70,000-80,000 visitors from 48 countries visited the two concurrent fairs each at the COEX exhibition center in southern Seoul. Wednesday's exclusive previews attracted a host of influential figures from the art world, including high-ranking South Korean officials, such as Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and first lady Kim Hea Kyung. Officials from global art institutions, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Tate Modern in London, were also present. The event further sparkled with the attendance of cultural figures, including K-pop stars, like BTS members and BLACKPINK's Lisa, alongside other celebrities. A headline-capturing sale at Frieze Seoul occurred on the preview day, where Zurich-based Hauser & Wirth sold Mark Bradford's "Okay, then I apologize" (202

Sep 8, 2025By Yonhap

Seoul art fairs affirm global potential as Kiaf, Frieze close

FRIEZE 2025 LG OLED kindles Park Seo-bo’s nature-born hues at Frieze Seoul

Park Seo-bo (1931-2023), the late master of monochrome “dansaekhwa,” devoted his life to the “Ecriture” series — a meditative journey that shifted and transformed across half a century. It began in the early 1970s with “pencil-Ecriture,” inspired by the crude penmanship of his 3-year-old son. In those hesitant marks, Park discovered a philosophy of repetition and self-emptying. Three decades later, one autumn at Mount Bandai in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, he stood before a ravine ablaze with crimson maples. The vision pierced his grayscale world, and color began to pour into his canvases, marking the birth of “color-Ecriture.” The hues he carried back were not abstract inventions but drawn directly from the earth: the black of soot of an old kitchen hearth, the yellow blaze of Jeju Island’s canola fields, the purple-red of wine, the orange of ripened persimmon and the tender pink of azaleas. These vibrant, nature-infused works now take the spotlight in “Park Seo‑Bo X LG OLED TV: Colors Drawn from Nature,” an exhibition at Coex in southern Seoul, staged as part

Sep 5, 2025By Park Han-sol

[FRIEZE 2025] LG OLED kindles Park Seo-bo’s nature-born hues at Frieze Seoul

Korean American patron’s quest to bring authentic Korean culture to US

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), one of the 10 largest museums in the United States, is preparing to revamp its Korea section with a modern twist. Currently, the Arts of Korea Gallery at the museum primarily features works from the Joseon Dynasty. To meet growing demand from local visitors for broader representation, the museum plans to introduce modern and contemporary Korean art from the 20th and 21st centuries. To do that, the Houston museum is seeking to partner with Korea’s first and largest private museum, Kansong Museum of Art, to showcase authentic Korean art. Bradley Bailey, the museum’s curator of Asian art, emphasized the MFAH’s commitment to its Korean collection, noting that it was the first museum in the American South to dedicate a gallery to Korean art. “Many Korean artists are doing very interesting things,” Bailey said in an interview with The Korea Times on Wednesday at The Shilla Hotel in Seoul. “After World War II, postwar Korean artists did not receive enough attention, especially in the United States. Some gained recognition in Europe, but much

Sep 4, 2025By Kang Hyun-kyung

Korean American patron’s quest to bring authentic Korean culture to US

FRIEZE 2025 Frieze Seoul 2025 opens in shadow of uncertainty, hits milestone deals

A lingering slump pervades the global art market as inflation concerns, wars and U.S.-imposed tariffs fuel financial uncertainty, leaving collectors hesitant to open their wallets. The malaise has rippled through this year’s international art fair circuit: Switzerland’s Art Basel has seen slipping sales among mega blue-chip galleries, while events like New York’s The Art Show and Taipei Dangdai have outright canceled their upcoming editions. Korea has been no exception. Its market has steadily contracted since peaking in 2022, while also weathering political turbulence in the wake of last year’s martial law fiasco. Into this fraught climate, two marquee art fairs — Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul — returned side by side on Wednesday, opening with a VIP preview at COEX. The fourth edition of Frieze brought together more than 120 galleries from 28 countries. High-profile attendees ranged from first lady Kim Hea Kyung, Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin and Malia Obama, daughter of former U.S. President Barack Obama, to K-pop stars like BTS’ RM and BLACKPINK’s Lisa. Its comeback

Sep 3, 2025By Park Han-sol

[FRIEZE 2025] Frieze Seoul 2025 opens in shadow of uncertainty, hits milestone deals

FRIEZE 2025 Garden of broken utopias: Lee Bul at Leeum Museum of Art

What happens when the body once used to protest grows into a vessel for something greater? When Lee Bul first stormed onto Korea's art scene in the late 1980s, she did so with bodily defiance — a force that shocked, unsettled and jolted other bodies awake. In 1989, she dangled nude from the rafters of a Seoul theater, with ropes biting into her skin as she spoke of her own abortion, then still a criminal act in the country. The following year, she roamed the streets of Korea and Japan in a grotesque costume of flesh and tentacles. For 12 days, passersby gawked and recoiled at her unruly presence. Her answer to their stares came in the performance’s wry title: “Sorry for Suffering — You think I’m a puppy on a picnic?” By 1997, her provocations reached New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where she unveiled the infamous “Majestic Splendor,” rows of dead fish sealed in plastic bags, their scales bedazzled with cheap sequins. The work embodied a visceral tension between glittering ideals of feminine beauty and decaying bodies. But its odor grew so noxious that it forced the mu

Sep 2, 2025By Park Han-sol

[FRIEZE 2025] Garden of broken utopias: Lee Bul at Leeum Museum of Art

FRIEZE 2025 Takashi Murakami returns to Seoul with smiling flowers, 'Superflat' philosophy

Wearing a hat in the shape of his signature smiling flower and a large Panda pendant around his neck, Takashi Murakami greeted Seoul with a grin as playful and vivid as his art. For the Japanese pop art icon, who has shaped the art world with his “Superflat” aesthetic, the outfit itself becomes another extension of his art. Twelve years after his last solo exhibition in Seoul, Murakami returns with “Seoul, Kawaii Summer Vacation,” a compact but impactful showcase of new works presented by Gagosian at APMA Cabinet, a project space inside the Amorepacific headquarters in central Seoul's Yongsan District. This is Murakami’s first Seoul solo since “Takashi in Superflat Wonderland” at Samsung Museum of Art Plateau in 2013 and follows his major 2023 retrospective “MurakamiZombie” at the Busan Museum of Art. This also is global mega gallery Gagosian’s third exhibition in Korea despite not having a permanent space in the country. Cute, flat and complicated The artist’s iconic smiling flowers are instantly recognizable from his merchandise and collaborations with K-pop music

Sep 2, 2025By Kwon Mee-yoo

[FRIEZE 2025] Takashi Murakami returns to Seoul with smiling flowers, 'Superflat' philosophy

Trinity Gallery to host art salon featuring Bae Joon-sung amid Seoul art fairs

As Seoul buzzes with the opening of Frieze and Kiaf Seoul — two of the world’s major art fairs — the Trinity Gallery is drawing attention with a special art salon featuring Korean artist Bae Joon-sung. According to gallery CEO Sojung Trinity Park, the program, "Salon Romantique 2: with Artist Bae Joon-sung," will take place Monday at the Paris Bar inside the Grand Hyatt Seoul. Bae is best known for his lenticular works, which combine images with painting to merge tradition and modernity, art and photography, and stillness and movement in a single frame. As viewers shift their position, the images change, transforming his work into an exploration of how we perceive art. One example depicts a gallery wall hung with portraits. Depending on the viewer’s angle, one of the paintings shifts between an image of a contemporary nude woman and a woman with a dress. “Just as the salons of 18th-century France were spaces where art, philosophy, music and literature came together, this program aims to reimagine that tradition today by bringing visual art and music into dialogue. By reviving t

Aug 31, 2025By Kim Se-jeong

Trinity Gallery to host art salon featuring Bae Joon-sung amid Seoul art fairs

FRIEZE 2025 Ha Chong-Hyun Art Center opens in Paju, honors lifework of ‘dansaekhwa’ master

At 89, artist Ha Chong-hyun arrived Friday at a new art center named after him, seated in a wheelchair pushed by his daughter. With frail health but undimmed wit, he said, “Today is the best day,” savoring the rare blessing of seeing a space dedicated entirely to his life’s work while he is still alive. Located in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, in a repurposed former building that formerly housed a publishing company, the Ha Chong-Hyun Art Center spans nearly 3,000 square meters over four stories and offers an unprecedented look into the life, philosophy and experimental trajectory of Ha, a pivotal figure in the history of "dansaekhwa," or Korean monochrome painting. The art center, operated by the Ha Chong-Hyun Art Foundation, showcases not only the artist's extensive oeuvre — from his early Informel pieces to the groundbreaking "Conjunction" series — but also the restless, generative spirit behind his six-decade-long inquiry: "What is painting?" Foundation chairperson Ha Yoon, the artist’s son, reflected on the significance of the center's opening, slated for Monday. “This was

Aug 31, 2025By Kwon Mee-yoo

[FRIEZE 2025] Ha Chong-Hyun Art Center opens in Paju, honors lifework of ‘dansaekhwa’ master

FRIEZE 2025 Korea Artist Prize 2025: Revealing unseen through sound, myth and AI

From works that distill the fraught histories of diasporic communities into resonant soundscapes to an “empty tomb” where visitors brush against the threshold between life and death, four finalists animate the “Korea Artist Prize 2025” exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul. Since 2012, the annual prize, co-organized by the MMCA and the SBS Foundation, has championed contemporary visionaries, selecting four individuals or collectives who bring fresh currents into Korean art. Each receives 50 million won ($36,000) to develop new pieces for the show. This year’s finalists are Kim Young-eun, Im Young-zoo, Kim Ji-pyeong and Unmake Lab. Working across sound, the classical vocabulary of Korean painting, superstition and artificial intelligence (AI), they each strive to illuminate the unseen and the invisible and highlight experiences omitted and forgotten within dominant narratives. Kim Young-eun has long explored how overlooked ambient sounds — from the nightly curfew siren that echoed across Korea until 1982 to a fragile wax cylinder recor

Aug 29, 2025By Park Han-sol

[FRIEZE 2025] Korea Artist Prize 2025: Revealing unseen through sound, myth and AI

FRIEZE 2025 Confessions in open diary: art of Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) never disguised the fact that autobiography was the raw material for her art. Hatred, rage, trauma, jealousy, desire — she cast them in bronze, stitched them in fabric and exorcised them in charcoal and ink over the course of more than seven decades. “It is not an image I am seeking. It’s not an idea. It is an emotion you want to recreate, an emotion of wanting, of giving and of destroying,” she once declared. Few artists in history have mined the caverns of their own psyche with such merciless candor. Fewer still have transformed those private agonies into a body of work so prolific, monumental and unflinchingly public. In her world, mothers became colossal spiders, fathers were devoured at the family dinner table, and children hovered as uneasy witnesses, vulnerable and watchful. Her sculptures are thus a diary in three-dimensional form — a confessional with its doors flung wide. To enter a Louis Bourgeois retrospective is to step into her mind’s most intimate chambers, which she insisted on leaving unlocked. Such is the case with “The Evanescent