From September 4 to September 7, 2024, the third edition of Frieze Seoul arrived as scheduled. As Frieze’s only “outpost” in Asia, this year’s Seoul fair conveyed a genuine sense of bustle—we repeatedly ran into familiar Chinese collectors, gallerists, and artists at the fair, in galleries, and in museums, and everyone seemed to agree that this was the largest, best-organized, and richest edition in terms of concurrent programming. As the only officially invited media outlet from mainland China, we came to Seoul to speak with the fair director, Patrick Lee, about the scale of this year’s Frieze Week, and returned with our observations. Special correspondent: Huang Xirui.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. This year’s fair brought together 117 galleries from 30 countries. Alongside the regular Contemporary and Masters sections, the programming across the fair became more varied and expansive. Notably, Seoul presented far more video, moving-image, and new-media work than Frieze’s other fairs, touching on subjects ranging from migration in nature and human society to future technologies and questions about life itself.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. “Focus has always been one of Frieze’s core sections. It features young galleries established no more than 12 years ago, with presentations centered on individual artists. Focus always brings out some of the most exciting emerging artists, and it has consistently been very popular with our audience,” Patrick told us. This year’s Focus Asia presented solo projects by artists from 10 galleries, including two young artists from China: Evelyn Taocheng Wang, from Chengdu, and Lu Yang, the Shanghai artist who has already become a darling of the international art world.
Portrait of the artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang.
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. Although Wang was born in Chengdu, she now lives in Rotterdam, and her work combines an Eastern xieyi sensibility with an exploration of identity, migration, and related questions. Her series Do Not Agree with Agnes Martin All the Time, shown in the main exhibition of this year’s Venice Biennale, attracted considerable attention, establishing her as one of Asia’s rising stars. At the fair, she presented three paintings that, like the Venice works, reflected her study of—and long fascination with—the colors of the artist Agnes Martin.
Lu Yang, DOKU—The Flow, 2024.
Lu Yang, Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. Lu Yang’s DOKU—The Flow is an animated film in which a digital human modeled on Lu himself moves from the real world toward a state of emptiness. It belongs to DOKU, the series about “being born alone and dying alone” that he has been developing for the past five years, and marks the first time he has shown the project at an Asian art fair. His exhibition schedule this year has been packed: Art Basel Hong Kong in March, Art Basel in Switzerland in June, and, in July, a solo project at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, making him the first Chinese artist to present a solo project there. His work also attracted many visitors during the Paris Olympics.
Jun Sojung, Syncope, 2023.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. Several other works by young Korean artists also drew the eye. Jun Sojung’s video Syncope (2023) combines multiple sounds and speeds: trains crossing Asia and Europe, bodies crossing borders, migrating data, and plants. One could almost let the accelerating force of Syncope carry us through the past, present, and future.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. We also encountered several “cats and creatures submerged in water,” which turned out to be works by the Seoul sculptor Hwang Sueyon. At first glance, they looked like stone, but they are actually sand sculptures. Sand normally loses its form under the erosion of water, and the artist uses this near-collapse to depict people in society. Made of sand, the sculptures are hard and heavy, sitting stiffly upright. By contrast, the enormous black sculpture is made of paper: large but light. The contrast between the two was quietly playful.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. The charred books and works marked by dark brown brushstrokes were made by the Sri Lankan artist Kingsley Gunatillake. They address the history of Sri Lanka’s civil war; the burned books carry the memory of the library destroyed by fire during that conflict.
Frieze LIVE performance, Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. Another new highlight of this year’s Frieze Seoul was Frieze LIVE. Five artists or groups created five live performances around the theme “spirit—scripture,” using the traditional Chinese characters for “spirit” and “scripture.” Some took place at the fair, while others were staged in galleries and art spaces across Seoul. Their subjects included the Buddhist idea of “bathing the soul,” the deconstruction of traditional Korean folk music and dance, social networks, and a performance in a wheelchair. There was even a performance of sleeping. “I’m especially looking forward to Jesse Chun’s performance, which explores the idea of ‘de-languaging’ through abstract musical notation and deconstructs traditional Korean folk music and dance,” Patrick said.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. The galleries in the main section also brought some of their strongest works. By the first VIP day, many gallery walls had already been “bought out.” The most expensive work was Georg Baselitz, brought by Thaddaeus Ropac, which sold for $1.1 million.
Georg Baselitz, Das ist auch ein Weg, 2021.
Georg Baselitz is one of the most important artists of our time; another of his works sold in Basel, Switzerland, in June for nearly 100 million yuan. The work shown here, Das ist auch ein Weg (2021), depicts the painter’s wife, Elke, resting her head on her hand. It is a tribute to Baselitz’s first portrait of his wife, which is now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—an indication of the importance of the present work. The painting also introduces a new element into Baselitz’s visual vocabulary: a pair of disconnected nylon stockings affixed to the inverted portrait of Elke, like fragile, invisible legs. The three-dimensional stockings add another visual plane to the otherwise flat painting.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024.
Nicolas Party, Red Forest Triptych, 2024. Another blue-chip gallery, Hauser & Wirth, brought a rare work by Nicolas Party, which sold for $350,000.
Nicolas Party: Dust exhibition view, Ho-Am Art Museum, South Korea, 2024. For Nicolas Party, art history is an inexhaustible archive. He freely borrows styles, subjects, and materials from artists across the history of art, from antiquity to the present, which is why his landscapes, still lifes, and portraits carry a classical undertone within their contemporaneity. Saturated colors, simplified forms, and uncanny imagery allow his work to move between ease and profundity, humor and solemnity—familiar yet elusive. His major retrospective, Dust, had just opened at the Ho-Am Art Museum in South Korea. The artist came to the museum to paint one of his signature pastel murals, so the work hanging on the wall that visitors saw on-site should technically be counted as two works.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024.
Anicka Yi, Nested Lung, 2023. Gladstone Gallery’s booth included drawings by the 20th-century masters Salvo and Keith Haring, alongside work by artists currently in the spotlight. The greatest attention went to a translucent sculpture by Anicka Yi, who is holding a major solo exhibition at Samsung Museum of Art. The work was priced at $200,000.
Robert Indiana, LOVE, 1966–1999. The most expensive work at Pace Gallery was LOVE, the iconic work made by the renowned American artist Robert Indiana between 1966 and 1999. It was priced at $550,000. Although modest in size, it belongs to the first group of “LOVE” symbols made by the artist and carries particular significance. Afterward, the visual and linguistic landscape of the United States—and of the world—was fundamentally changed.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. The highest-priced work at White Cube was this rare piece by Antony Gormley, at $693,000. Tracey Emin’s sculptures and neon works also sold out, with the two works together priced at $265,000.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Five Elements 415, Celtic Sea, St. Agnes, 1994/2012. The most expensive work at Lisson Gallery was Five Elements 415, Celtic Sea, St. Agnes, from Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Five Elements sculpture series, priced at $406,800. Sugimoto’s work manipulates the flow of time and the unknowability of the universe; he consistently captures life and its fleeting moments in the most poetic terms.
Frieze Seoul fair view, 2024. This Frieze Week was livelier than the previous two editions. Galleries in Hannam-dong, Samcheong-dong, and Cheongdam-dong even extended their hours to 10:30 p.m. for “Gallery Night,” opening their doors to visitors throughout the evening. The K-pop star SAAY and DJ Why Be also accepted an invitation from Frieze Music for the first time, bringing Korean popular music into dialogue with art. “I have been struck by the support from Seoul’s art community. They genuinely embraced our fair and played a crucial role in it—this year, almost every major art institution in Seoul took part in Frieze Week,” Patrick told us.
Among the major exhibitions was Space, the largest exhibition in Asia to date by the celebrated Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, at the Amorepacific Museum of Art. The new installations included a 140-square-meter single-family home, an empty public swimming pool, and a restaurant.
Seoul Museum of Art exhibition view, 2024.
The public museums were largely devoted to group exhibitions. At the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, a major exhibition bringing together 60 Asian women artists included works by Cao Fei, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Atsuko Tanaka, Bharti Kher, and other prominent artists. The Seoul Museum of Art presented the group exhibition Infinite Divisions at the End of the World, featuring works by Korean artists including Bae Yoon Hwan, Yang Hae-gyu, Hong Seung-Hye, and Lee Bul.
Anicka Yi, Another Evolution, or Being There, Samsung Museum of Art, 2024. In addition to the Nicolas Party exhibition mentioned above, Anicka Yi’s major exhibition at Samsung Museum of Art was enough to make visitors exclaim, “It’s worth coming to Seoul just for this.”
Do Ho Suh solo exhibition view, Art Sonje Center, 2024. Art Sonje Center was presenting a major exhibition by the Korean artist Do Ho Suh, regarded as a national treasure. “This is a special exhibition organized by the brothers Do Ho Suh and Do Ho, in memory of the artistic legacy of their father, Seo Do-ok. The elder brother, Do Ho Suh, created large-scale installations, while the younger, Do Ho, gave the works life through architectural space, paying a powerful tribute to their father’s legacy,” Patrick told us.
Pace Gallery Seoul, 2024. The galleries, too, were making every effort. At Pace, the artist Lee Ufan worked with the Rothko family to curate a two-person exhibition of his work and Mark Rothko’s. New works by Gagosian artist Derrick Adams were presented at the Amorepacific space.
Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul, installation in progress, 2024. Thaddaeus Ropac presented Soul, a solo exhibition by the renowned British working-class sculptor Sean Scully. “I also think Kim Heecheon’s solo exhibition at Atelier Hermès in Dosan Park will be excellent,” Patrick said.
Songeun Art Center. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, Songeun Art Center collaborated with the Pinault Collection on an exhibition of more than 60 works by 20 artists, including Marlene Dumas, Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and David Hammons.
Busan Biennale, Seeing in the Dark, Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, 2024. Kiaf SEOUL, as well as the Gwangju and Busan art biennials, also took place alongside Frieze Seoul. It was, in effect, the first major celebration of Asia’s art season in the second half of 2024. “If you have the chance, the biennials in Busan and Gwangju are well worth seeing,” Patrick said with a smile. Indeed, Busan is only a 2.5-hour train ride from Seoul, while Gwangju is just a 1.5-hour flight away. Nearby cities also joined the Frieze Week circuit, making clear that Korea’s contemporary-art atmosphere is not confined to Seoul but has spread across a broader region, becoming a calling card addressed to the world. “Frieze always works to ensure that each fair reflects the distinctive identity of its host city, and Frieze Seoul is no exception,” Patrick said.