Frieze Seoul 2024: the highlights

Frieze Seoul returns to COEX, located in the centre of Gangnam, for its third edition from September 4 through 7 2024. Featuring over 110 galleries from around the globe, this year’s fair coincides with Kiaf SEOUL, along with two biennials in Gwangju and Busan, further cementing the fair as the premier international art fair in Korea, and the country’s place as a major art destination in Asia as well as within the global art market. This year’s packed programme proves to be even bigger.

Korea’s rich art legacy will be on display throughout the fair, from the famed Dansaekhwa (“monochromatic painting” in Korean) movement to today, highlighting the work of artists like the late Park Seo-Bo, a leading figure within the Dansaekhwa movement, to the late video art pioneer Nam June Paik, along with contemporary artists Jeon Joonho, Lee Bul, Kang Seung Lee, Mire Lee, Lee Ufan, Park Youngsook, Do Ho Suh, and Haegue Yang.

Frieze Seoul 2024 highlights: from the fair to around the South Korean capital

LG OLED, Frieze Seoul’s headline partner, pays homage to the late Se Ok Suh, a major abstract ink artist, by showing a major presentation of his work catapulted into the tech age through new, digital renditions executed by his sons, architect Eul Ho Suh and artist Do Ho Suh.

To celebrate its one-year anniversary in Seoul, White Cube will show its artists who have a connection with South Korea, such as striped grey monochromatic Park Seo-Bo canvas and Marguerite Humeau, who will unveil a new sculpture the twist, a tornado of copper wire, in the booth after her solo exhibition just wrapped up at ts Seoul gallery, and Marina Rheingantz, who along with Humeau, is in the Gwangju Biennial. A glass medicine cabinet filled with jewel-toned glass vessels by Mona Hatoum, a curved bronze Noguchi sculpture, and a bronze relief diptych by Tracey Emin are among the other works at the booth.

At Pace, a major painting by Lee Ufan from the 1988, will be the main highlight of the stand, on display alongside works by Piñeiro Bello, Berlin duo Elmgreen & Dragset (They have an exhibition at the Amorepacific Museum), New York-based Kylie Manning (She also has an exhibition at SpaceK Seoul until November 10), Robert Indiana, and Lee Kun-Yong, who has a piece in the ground exhibition Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea.

Shannon Cartier Lucy debuts a new group of highly-anticipated figurative paintings capturing small moments in life, like this quirky close-up of a woman holding a teacup, in life in a solo section at MASSIMODECARLO, which is also showing Tomoo Gokita, Diane Del-Pra, Lenz Geerk, John Armleder, whose work is also at the gallery’s Seoul Studio.

San Francisco-based gallery Jessica Silverman brings the vibrant, swirling brushstrokes of New York painter Hayal Pozanti for a solo presentation filled with her dreamy landscapes and joyful florals that land somewhere between abstraction and figuration.

The Chicago-, Mexico City-, and Paris-based Mariane Ibrahim presents a group showing of artists from its roster, including Amoako Boafo, Salah Elmur, Patrick Eugène, Yukimasa Ida, Clotilde Jiménez, Alexandre Lenoir, Ian Micheal, Ian Mwesiga and Peter Uka.

Hauser & Wirth presents a group stand with contemporary and historical works by Rita Ackermann, Louise Bourgeois, Ed Clark, Nicolas Party and Pat Steir, among others. Filipino artist Mark Justiniani shows sculptures emulating nested wormholes that use a series of reflective lenses to cast light at The Drawing Room.

Kukje, one of the country’s oldest galleries, celebrates Park Seo-Bo with a 2008 monochromatic canvas made with oxblood Korean hanji paper. Both Korean and international artists are set to be exhibited at the stand, with Ha Chong-Hyun and Kim Yong-Ik presenting abstract works, and Kyungah Ham and Haegue Yang showing mixed media works. Art fair staples Anish Kapoor and Ugo Rondinone are among the international artists at Kukje. Timothy Taylor will present eight new paintings by Honor Titus that look at the role of race and class in privilege and leisure.

In the Focus Asia section, supported by Stone Island, curators Hyejung Jang, the chief curator of DOOSAN Gallery, and Joselina Cruz, the director and curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design at the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde selected ten galleries under 12 years old in the region to present solo artist exhibitions. Seoul’s A-L will spotlight Korean painter Cho Hyori, who centered her stand around the theme of driving, displaying different perspectives where the viewer takes on the role of driver or passenger. Lu Yang fuses together Japanese pop culture with Buddhism, transhumanist theories, and neuroscience at Parcel, while over at Kayokoyuki, Evelyn Taocheng Wang references the late Agnes Martin, influencing the work with her experience as a Chinese immigrant in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, at Frieze Masters Tokyo Gallery + BTAP looks at the legacy of the Dansaekhwa movement and its impact today through works by Park Seo-Bo, Choi Myoung Young, and Lee Jin Woo. Wooson Gallery will show a solo booth of work by Myungmi Lee, a first-generation Korean female artist, showing monochromatic works from her groundbreaking 1977 show GAME. Niki de Saint Phalle’s vibrant 1060s sculptures will be on display at Galerie Mitterrand.

Outside of the fair, K11 Art Foundation will have a full program highlighting generative art, starting with a Moon Party inside its first generative art exhibition Lunar Water, with works by a'strict, Tyler Hobbs, and Cheng Ran. Gabriel Orozco will show new works at White Cube Seoul.

At the Leeum Museum of Art, Korean-American artist Anicka Yi makes her Asian institution debut with over 40 works while Rirkrit Tiravanija serves as artistic director of Dream Screen, looking at the work of millennial artists and collectives including Choi Yun, Kim Heecheon and Lee Eunsae (Korea), Wang Bo and Zhang Vivien (China), Kamonlak Sukchai (Thailand) and Yi-Fan Li (Taiwan). Works from the Pinault Collection by David Hammons, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans and Rudolf Stingel are on display at SONGEUN.

Over at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Shigeko Kubota (Japan), Lee Bul (Korea), Pacita Abad (Philippines), Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia), Mrinalini Mukherjee (India) and Yin Xiuzhen (China) are among the artists featured in Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists.

Frieze Seoul runs from 4 - 7 September 2024

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