As Seoul hosts two major art fairs this week, there is a host of exhibitions elsewhere in the city and Korea, from a meeting of Mark Rothko and Lee Ufan to Francois Pinault’s collection.
By Park Han-sol
The art world in Korea is once again entering an autumn frenzy with the return of the two biggest fairs – Frieze Seoul and Kiaf (Korea International Art Fair) Seoul. Along with these mega-events – Frieze Seoul runs from September 4 to 7 and Kiaf Seoul from September 4 to 8 – comes a smorgasbord of art in the country’s museums and galleries, whether it be blockbuster exhibition openings or the 30th-anniversary celebration of Asia’s oldest biennale. From the remarkable meeting of Mark Rothko and Lee Ufan to Francois Pinault’s coveted collection, here’s a round-up of shows that could be the cherry on top of your autumnal cultural outings.
1. Correspondence: Lee Ufan and Mark Rothko
This is a blockbuster encounter between masters of the East and the West. Curated by Lee in collaboration with the Rothko family, this two-person show places Lee’s “Dialogue” and “Response” series, produced between 2018 and 2023, in a compelling dialogue with Rothko’s tours de force from the 1950s and 1960s. The show offers a rare chance to witness unexpected intersections in colour, surface and atmosphere between these two artistic heavyweights.
Sep 4-Oct 26, Pace Gallery Seoul, 267 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan district, Seoul
2. Portrait of a Collection
The Pinault Collection – an eclectic assemblage of over 10,000 contemporary artworks amassed by Francois Pinault, the French billionaire and founder of the luxury group Kering – returns to Korea after its initial mini-presentation at SongEun 13 years ago. This exhibition seeks to encapsulate the essence of the famed collection with more than 60 select pieces by the likes of Danh Vo, Julie Mehretu and Anri Sala, all spread throughout the striking, angular building designed by Herzog & de Meuron.
Sep 4 to Nov 23, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation, 441 Dosan-daero, Gangnam district, Seoul
3. Gagosian’s Derrick Adams: The Strip
Gagosian gallery has chosen Derrick Adams as the star of its inaugural show in Korea. For his first Seoul outing, the New York-based artist is taking over a ground-floor project space in the David Chipperfield-designed headquarters of beauty giant Amorepacific. Adams, celebrated for his portrayal of black life through strikingly flat planes of bold colours, debuts a new body of works that reimagines beauty store display windows with mannequin heads, colourful wigs and spray-painted hearts.
Until Oct 12, APMA Cabinet, 1/F Amorepacific Headquarters, 100 Hangang-daero, Yongsan district, Seoul
4. Nicolas Party: Dust
Swiss art star Nicolas Party is best recognised for his colour-drenched portraits, landscapes and murals infused with a touch of Surrealism – a number of which have fetched soaring prices at recent auctions. Now, over 80 of his pieces have landed in Yongin, Gyeonggi province, for the first exhibition surveying his work in South Korea. Among the works on display are five pastel murals drawn directly onto the museum’s gallery walls, immersing viewers in mystical yet ephemeral environments.
Until Jan 19, 2025, Ho-Am Museum of Art, 38 Everland-ro 562beon-gil, Pogok-eup, Cheoin-gu, Yongin, Gyeonggi province
5. Do Ho Suh: Speculations
Do Ho Suh’s name is synonymous with his otherworldly, large-scale fabric replicas of former homes and studios from around the world. While his new show – his first in his home country in 12 years – leaves out these iconic pieces, it still grapples with the same questions surrounding displacement, dwellings and the body’s relationship to space. His My Home/s, Positive, for instance, is a structure that assembles scaled-down versions of all the houses and studios the artist has ever lived in, much like Tetris blocks. There’s also a miniature, kinetic version of Public Figures, a monumental plinth installed earlier this year in the plaza of the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington.
Until Nov 3, Art Sonje Centre, 87 Yulgok-ro 3-gil, Jongno district, Seoul
6. Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces
The Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset, whose art is often a provocative fusion of conceptual wit and social commentary, is set to transform the white-cube museum with a life-size family house, a public pool and a restaurant. By reimagining familiar spaces and objects into uncanny scenarios, the two invite viewers to rethink everyday realities. With more than 60 works on view, the exhibition marks their most extensive presentation in Asia to date.
Until Feb 23, 2025, Amorepacific Museum of Art, 100 Hangang-daero, Yongsan district, Seoul
7. Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists
The latest group exhibition of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, seeks to re-examine the contemporary significance of post-1960s art by Asian women creators, with a focus on the theme of corporeality.
Within thought-provoking works by Atsuko Tanaka, Pacita Abad, Hong Lee Hyun-sook and around 60 other artists from 11 Asian countries, the body becomes a site where ideologies, identities, sexualities, otherness and resistance converge.
Until March 3, 2025, MMCA Seoul, 30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno district, Seoul
8. Anicka Yi: There Exists Another Evolution, But In This One
Korean-American artist Anicka Yi has long worked with unconventional “collaborators” in her oeuvre – bacteria, scents and deep-fried flowers, among others. When paired with machinery, these organic elements create multisensory experiences that prompt viewers to rethink the relationship between the human and the non-human. Yi’s show at the Leeum Museum of Art – her first and most extensive museum presentation in Asia – offers rare insight into her latest projects, featuring some 40 pieces and new commissions.
Sep 5-Dec 29, Leeum Museum of Art, 60-16 Itaewon-ro 55-gil, Yongsan district, Seoul
9. Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive
Refik Anadol, a pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence, describes his generative AI model as an entity capable of dreaming on its own. His installations fill the walls of the newly opened art space Futura Seoul with ever-changing AI-generated abstractions, derived from a data set of half a billion images of flora, fungi and fauna from rainforests around the world. Unique to the Seoul exhibition, the immersive experience is further heightened by echoing sounds and earthy odours – also the product of AI created from archives of sonic data and molecular compositions. “When I think about data as a pigment, it’s something that deviates from the physical Newtonian roots. It is a pigment that never stops, that always shifts,” Anadol says.
Sep 5-Dec 8, Futura Seoul, 61 Bukchon-ro, Jongno district, Seoul
10. Kylie Manning: Yellow Sea
Raised in Alaska and Mexico and having once worked in commercial fishing, New York-based painter Kylie Manning channels her coastal experiences into mesmerising oil seascapes. The exhibition’s title, “Yellow Sea”, is inspired by the ocean between the Korean peninsula and mainland China with its dramatic nine-metre (29.5-ft) tidal range. Manning describes a “distillation process” in her work, where she spreads pigments and oil to create expansive, wavelike washes across the canvas. This technique edits out much of the detail, leaving a representation that ebbs and flows, mirroring the vast tidal phenomenon. “What remains in the tide [and in my painting] are these memories and stories,” she explains.
Until Nov 10, Space K Seoul, 32 Magokjungang 8-ro, Gangseo district, Seoul
11. Turbulent Times: Women, Life, Art
The Seoul Museum of Art’s celebration of Chun Kyung-ja’s centennial, marking the birth of one of Korea’s most towering female painters, is a delightful revelation. The show features 22 other Korean women artists who were Chun’s contemporaries, each navigating the tumultuous eras of the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule, the 1950-53 Korean war, military regimes and democratisation movements. The show offers insightful glimpses into the often-overlooked journeys of such artists during these pivotal times, while also honouring Chun’s enduring legacy.
Until Nov 17, Seoul Museum of Art, 61 Deoksugung-gil, Jung district, Seoul
12. Pansori – a soundscape of the 21st century
Pansori, a Korean musical tradition of storytelling that blends chant-style vocals with drumming, translates to “the sound from the public place”. The 15th edition of the Gwangju Biennale, Asia’s longest-running art biennial, uses this musical storytelling as a thematic gateway. Led by artistic director Nicolas Bourriaud, the exhibition brings together 73 artists who examine the evolving relationship between humans and contemporary spaces – intimate, geopolitical and planetary. The show will be divided into three segments, each in tune with a specific sonic phenomenon that functions as a spatial metaphor: “Larsen Effect”, “Polyphony” and “Primordial Sound”.
Sep 7-Dec 1, various sites in Gwangju, South Korea
13. Seeing in the Dark
This year’s Busan Biennale takes its cue from an unlikely pairing: the 18th-century “pirate utopias”, which served as autonomous and surprisingly egalitarian havens for socially exiled outcasts, and Buddhist monastic practices that emphasise ascetic living far removed from the normative, secular world. Guided by these distinctly alternative ways of life, co-artistic directors Vera Mey and Philippe Pirotte invite us to look beyond the boundaries of normality as we navigate today’s uncertain world – through the provocative works of 78 artists, instrument makers, doctors, DJs and religious practitioners.
Until Oct 20, various sites in Busan, South Korea
Read the full report at The Korea Times
The Korea Times