15 exhibitions to catch throughout Frieze and Kiaf Seoul 2024, from Rothko to Do Ho Suh

By Park Han-sol

The artwork world in Korea is as soon as once more getting into a fall frenzy as September approaches, heralding the return of the 2 greatest festivals — Frieze and Kiaf Seoul.

Together with these mega-events comes a smorgasbord of artwork throughout the nation’s museums and galleries, whether or not it’s blockbuster exhibition openings or the Thirtieth-anniversary celebration of Asia’s oldest biennale.

From the exceptional meetup of Mark Rothko and Lee Ufan to the comeback of François Pinault’s coveted assortment, right here’s a roundup of exhibits that may very well be the cherry on high of your autumnal cultural outings.

“Correspondence: Lee Ufan and Mark Rothko” at Tempo Gallery Seoul (Sept. 4-Oct. 26)

It’s a blockbuster encounter between the masters of the East and the West.

Curated by Lee in collaboration with the Rothko household, this two-person present locations Lee’s “Dialogue” and “Response” collection, produced between 2018 and 2023, in a compelling dialogue with Mark Rothko’s excursions de drive from the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties.

The present affords a uncommon likelihood to witness surprising intersections in colour, floor and environment between these two inventive heavyweights.

“Portrait of a Assortment” at SongEun (Sept. 4-Nov. 23)

The Pinault Assortment — an eclectic assemblage of over 10,000 modern artworks amassed by François Pinault, the French billionaire and founding father of the posh group Kering — returns to Korea after its preliminary mini-presentation at SongEun 13 years in the past.

This exhibition seeks to encapsulate the essence of the famed assortment by means of greater than 60 choose items by the likes of Danh Vo, Julie Mehretu and Anri Sala, all unfold all through the putting, angular constructing designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

Gagosian’s “Derrick Adams: The Strip” at APMA Cupboard (Sept. 3-Oct. 12)

The mega gallery Gagosian has chosen Derrick Adams because the star of its inaugural present in Korea. For his first-ever Seoul outing, the New York-based artist is taking on a ground-floor challenge house within the David Chipperfield-designed headquarters of magnificence large Amorepacific.

Adams, celebrated for his portrayal of Black life by means of strikingly flat planes of daring colours, debuts a brand new physique of works that reimagines magnificence retailer show home windows with model heads, colourful wigs and spray-painted hearts.

“Nicolas Social gathering: Mud” at Hoam Museum of Artwork (Aug. 31–Jan. 19, 2025)

Swiss artwork star Nicolas Social gathering is finest acknowledged for his color-drenched portraits, landscapes and murals infused with a contact of Surrealism — various which have fetched hovering costs at latest auctions.

Now, over 80 of his items have landed in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, for his first survey exhibition within the nation. Among the many works on show are 5 pastel murals drawn immediately onto the museum’s gallery partitions, immersing viewers in mystical but ephemeral environments.

“Do Ho Suh: Speculations” at Artwork Sonje Middle (Aug. 17-Nov. 3)

Do Ho Suh’s title is commonly synonymous together with his otherworldly, large-scale cloth replicas of former houses and studios from world wide.

Whereas his new present — his first in his residence nation in 12 years — leaves out these iconic items, it nonetheless grapples with the identical questions surrounding displacement, dwellings and the physique’s relationship to house. His “My House/s, Constructive,” as an example, is a construction that assembles scaled-down variations of all the homes and studios the artist has ever lived in, very like Tetris blocks.

There’s additionally a miniature, kinetic model of “Public Figures,” a monumental plinth put in earlier this 12 months within the plaza of the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of Asian Artwork in Washington, D.C.

“Elmgreen & Dragset: Areas” at Amorepacific Museum of Artwork (Sept. 3–Feb. 23, 2025)

The Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset, whose artwork is commonly a provocative fusion of conceptual wit and social commentary, is ready to rework the white-cube museum with a life-sized household home, a public pool and a restaurant.

By reimagining acquainted areas and objects into uncanny situations, the 2 invite viewers to rethink on a regular basis realities. With greater than 60 works on view, the exhibition marks their most in depth presentation in Asia so far.

“Connecting Our bodies: Asian Girls Artists” at MMCA Seoul (Sept. 3–March 3, 2025)

The newest group exhibition of the Nationwide Museum of Fashionable and Up to date Artwork, Korea, seeks to reexamine the modern significance of post-Nineteen Sixties artwork by Asian ladies creators, with a give attention to the theme of corporeality.

Inside thought-provoking works by Atsuko Tanaka, Pacita Abad, Hong Lee Hyun-sook and round 60 different artists from 11 Asian nations, the physique turns into a web site the place ideologies, identities, sexualities, otherness and resistance converge.

“Anicka Yi: There Exists One other Evolution, However In This One” at Leeum Museum of Artwork (Sept. 5–Dec. 29)

Korean American artist Anicka Yi has lengthy labored with unconventional “collaborators” in her oeuvre — micro organism, scents and deep-fried flowers, amongst others. When paired with equipment, these natural parts create multisensory experiences that immediate viewers to rethink the connection between the human and the non-human.

Yi’s present on the Leeum Museum of Artwork — her first and most in depth museum presentation in Asia — affords uncommon perception into her newest initiatives, that includes some 40 items and new commissions.

“Echoes of the Earth: Residing Archive” at Futura Seoul (Sept. 5–Dec. 8)

Refik Anadol, a pioneer within the aesthetics of machine intelligence, describes his generative AI mannequin as an entity able to dreaming by itself.

His installations fill the partitions of the newly opened artwork house Futura Seoul with ever-changing AI-generated abstractions, derived from a dataset of half a billion photos of flora, fungi and fauna from rainforests world wide. Distinctive to the Seoul exhibition, the immersive expertise is additional heightened by echoing sounds and earthy odors — additionally the product of AI created from archives of sonic information and molecular compositions.

“Once I take into consideration information as a pigment, it’s one thing that deviates from the bodily Newtonian roots. It’s a pigment that by no means stops, that all the time shifts,” Anadol says.

“Kylie Manning: Yellow Sea” at Area Okay (Aug. 9-Nov. 10)

Raised between Alaska and Mexico and having as soon as labored as a industrial fisher, New York-based painter Kylie Manning channels her coastal experiences into mesmerizing oil seascapes.

The exhibition’s title “Yellow Sea” is impressed by the ocean between the Korean Peninsula and mainland China with a dramatic 9-meter tidal vary. Manning describes a “distillation course of” in her work, the place she spreads pigments and oil to create expansive, wave-like washes throughout the canvas. This system edits out a lot of the element, leaving a illustration that ebbs and flows, mirroring the huge tidal phenomenon. “What stays within the tide [and in my painting] are these recollections and tales,” she explains.

“Turbulent Occasions: Girls, Life, Artwork” at Seoul Museum of Artwork (Aug. 8–Nov. 17)

The Seoul Museum of Artwork’s celebration of Chun Kyung-ja’s centennial, marking the beginning of certainly one of Korea’s most towering feminine painters, is a pleasant revelation.

The present options 22 different Korean ladies artists who have been Chun’s contemporaries, every navigating the tumultuous eras of the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule, the 1950-53 Korean Battle, navy regimes and democratization actions. The present affords insightful glimpses into the often-overlooked journeys of such artists throughout these pivotal occasions, whereas additionally honoring Chun’s enduring legacy.

Different powerhouse worldwide and Korean galleries are staging their very own displays of big-name and rising creatives.

Highlights embrace “Yoo Youngkuk: Stand on the Golden Imply” at PKM Gallery (Aug. 21–Oct. 10); “Nari Ward: ongoin’” at Lehmann Maupin Seoul (Aug. 28–Oct. 19); “Kyungah Ham: Phantom and A Map” at Kukje Gallery (Aug. 30–Nov. 3); “John Pai: Shared Destinies” at Gallery Hyundai (Aug. 28–Oct. 20); “Sean Scully: Soul” at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul (Sept. 3–Nov. 9); “Gabriel Orozco” at White Dice Seoul (Sept. 4–Dec. 14); “Joan Jonas: the Wind sings” at Gladstone Gallery Seoul (Sept. 5–Oct. 12); and “Doki Kim: The Apple and the Moon” at Gallery Baton (Aug. 14–Sept. 14).

“Pansori — a soundscape of the twenty first century” at Gwangju Biennale (Sept. 7–Dec. 1)

“Pansori,” a Korean musical custom of storytelling that blends chant-style vocals with drumming, interprets to “the sound from the general public place.” The fifteenth version of the Gwangju Biennale, Asia’s longest-running artwork biennial, makes use of this musical storytelling as a thematic gateway.

Led by inventive director Nicolas Bourriaud, the exhibition brings collectively 73 artists who study the evolving relationship between people and modern areas — intimate, geopolitical and planetary. The present shall be divided into three segments, every in tune with a selected sonic phenomenon that capabilities as a spatial metaphor: “Larsen Impact,” “Polyphony” and “Primordial Sound.”

“Seeing within the Darkish” at Busan Biennale (Aug. 17–Oct. 20)

This 12 months’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 emphasize ascetic residing far faraway from the normative, secular world.

Guided by these distinctly alternative routes of life, co-artistic administrators Vera Mey and Philippe Pirotte invite us to look past the boundaries of normality as we navigate right now’s unsure world — by means of the provocative works of 78 artists, instrument makers, medical doctors, DJs and non secular practitioners.

Phillips’ “Azure Horizons: A Journey Via Blue” at Songwon Artwork Middle (Aug. 30–Sept. 8)

International public sale large Phillips’ pop-up group exhibition intriguingly spotlights the colour azure as each its visible and symbolic thread.

Considered not solely probably the most richly layered shade of blue but additionally probably the most extremely valued pigment utilized in portray all through the historical past of artwork, azure is what unites the featured works of each in-demand and rising skills, together with Nicolas Social gathering, Ugo Rondinone, George Apartment, Flora Yukhnovich and Kim Min-ku.

“2024 Join Seoul” at Seoul Public sale Gangnam Middle (Aug. 24–Sept. 13)

Seoul Public sale celebrates this 12 months’s Frieze Week with a lineup of eye-dazzlers — “Yoshitomo Nara,” a showcase of 30 works by the Japanese artwork star; “Mindfulness,” a artistic dialogue between painter Lee Ufan and ceramist Park Younger-sook; and “Up to date Artwork Sale,” a preview of its Sept. 10 marquee public sale.

The homegrown public sale home can also be teaming up with Hong Kong’s K11 Artwork Basis for the “Lunar Water” media artwork exhibition and Paris-based vintage seller Les Enluminures for the “European Heritage” vintage jewellery show. All these occasions could be skilled in a single go to to its eight-story Gangnam Middle.