Two art fairs are better than one?

Collaboration was part of the deal when Frieze and the Korean International Art Fair (Kiaf) Seoul entered into a partnership in 2022 that saw the two fairs presented side by side with overlapping dates and a shared venue.

Instead of Frieze’s international fair chain cannibalising the local arts ecology, the two fairs have bolstered each other by sharing foot traffic and expanding their offerings at different price points.

But perhaps the joined forces were still not enough to pull European and US galleries, collectors and institutional buyers to the South Korean city, with New York’s The Armory Show being a major clash in the art fair calendar. Australian galleries also felt the pressure, with Sydney Contemporary in full swing as well. For example, Jan Murphy Gallery shared a booth with Sophie Gannon Gallery at Sydney Contemporary 2023, but this year ditched it entirely for Kiaf Seoul; while Sullivan+Strumpf opted for Sydney Contemporary and The Armory Show, but no Seoul presence despite its commitment in Asia (Art Basel Hong Kong and an outpost in Singapore).

Arguably both Hong Kong and Singapore present a mix of visitors from the East and West, while Seoul’s commercial scene seems to be dominated by those in the Asian region, judging by the crowd and languages spoken during the fairs.

Let’s take a look at the hits and misses of Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul 2024.

Frieze Seoul 2024

From the get-go it was clear that Frieze Seoul is still going through its teething period with crowd control and venue management. Pre-booked entry on preview day (4 September) was timed to the dot and art fair facilitators shouted at everyone to have their QR codes ready every two minutes, while those kept behind the barriers watched VIP clients being led in by gallerists. It wasn’t clear if media were granted the privilege to skip the line, so ArtsHub stood waiting among the slightly disgruntled preview crowd, who had paid KR₩250,000 (AU$278) for their early access – four hours before doors opened to the public at 3pm.

In comparison to Art Basel, which has really built upon its reputation as not only a commercial event, but also a platform for dialogue in contemporary art, Frieze Seoul’s programming left much to be desired. There were no major installations like ‘Encounters’, and talks and performances had a barely-there presence. It meant that the fair experience was entirely hinged on booth presentations, which largely felt safe and predictable, with galleries bringing out a mix of big names and fast-rising stars.

Galerie Quynh‘s presentation of Tuan Andrew Nguyen‘s [Alexander] Calder-esque hanging mobiles with a Vietnamese twist took out a well deserved win of the 2024 Frieze Seoul Stand Prize, while Anicka Yi’s animated sculpture, resembling a deep sea life form at Gladstone Gallery, was another crowd favourite, prompting follow-up visits to the Leeum Museum of Art where a solo exhibition is running concurrently.

First-time Frieze Seoul participant, Galarie Sultana from Paris, brought a cheeky group show including miniature paintings and strap-on crotch lights. The tiny paintings by Sophie Varin, each no larger than half the size of your palm, was a savvy last-minute inclusion and said to have sold out, each priced at €1600 to 2500 (AU$2629 to 4108).

Gagosian’s display of Maurizio Cattelan’s gold bullet-holed panels in Seoul may have caused a stir, as the artist was accused of copying this idea from a series by British American artist Anthony James, when the pieces were displayed in New York in May.

But what really caught ArtsHub‘s eye in the booth was Tetsuya Ishida’s painting, featuring a corporate-geared office worker with a rusty armchair acting as an extension of his body. ArtsHub has seen photos of work before from this artist – who struggled with mental illness throughout his short life – but the despair and jarring sense of isolation is even more prominent in person. It’s a cruel joke in a heavily commercial art fair environment; Ishida’s works have been aggressively capitalised upon since his death.

Read: The most pressing question on curators’ lips

Equally uncanny was Li Wei’s silicon school kids at Tang Contemporary Art, titled Once Upon A Time. Six of them sit casually on a black sofa surrounded by curious, photo-taking visitors.

STATION was the only Australian presence at Frieze Seoul this year, with a vibrant booth of works by Nell, Tomislav Nikolic, Tom Polo and Nadia Hernández that was well attended by visitors when I went by. It was refreshingly different to the gallery’s Art Basel Hong Kong booth, which featured Daniel Boyd and Shireen Taweel.

Sales-wise big galleries such as Hauser & Wirth (a US$2.5 million Nicolas Party painting among the reported sales), Pace Gallery and Lehmann Maupin, still get cream of the crop, while others observed slower deals and a more conservative approach from Asian collectors.

To get an overall sense of what was shown at Frieze Seoul 2024, find a video recap here.

Kiaf Seoul 2024

The energy at Kiaf Seoul was overwhelmingly different with a stronger sense of interactiveness.

The aforementioned Jan Murphy Gallery presented two powerhouse Australian artists, Ben Quilty and Betty Muffler. Quilty’s garden gnomes with thick gestural paint dominated one wall (eight out of 23 had the red sticker representing ‘sold’), while Muffler’s large-scale works in shades of black and white served as a proud display from the world’s oldest continuous living culture.

However, with apartment living being the norm in the populous Asian city, smaller works are favoured over large works that few may have the space to afford.

But then again, three paintings (the largest over two metres in width and height) by Cannon Dill at Sydney’s PIERMARQ* bucked this trend, having been secured by a long-time collector before the fair even opened. The gallery also had sizeable works by the California-based Ben Crase and Jeremy Shockley, rounding out an entirely West Coast presentation.

Second-time Kiaf participant, Newchild, based in Antwerp, Belgium, had an intriguing group show with a prime location right next to one of the fair entrances. Chris Oh’s abalone shell painted Renaissance-style was a delight (you can follow the artist on Instagram) and Kristian Touborg’s paintings depicting dream-like water reflections equally captured attention.

Works at Kiaf were noticeably more playful, like Kwak Seungyong’s depiction of a nude Mona Lisa dressed in sheer Hanbok (Galerie GAIA), a traditional Korean dress, and Daniel Firman’s life-sized sculpture that appears to be a blond-haired, stiletto heel-wearing figure with her head against the wall, hidden under a pink pullover (CHOI&CHOI Gallery).

The 2024 Kiaf Highlights artist Kim Eunjin also falls into this theme, with compositions that combine pop culture, folk lore, memes and mythology using traditional materials such as mother-of-pearl.

Peering deeper into Kiaf and viewers will notice obvious crossovers in gallery, artist and even booth presentations with Hong Kong’s Art Central earlier in the year, leading to speculation around sales if some are flying the same artworks from one fair to another.

Samcheong gallery night

Each night during the art fair week, galleries and museums across several clustered cultural districts in Seoul extended their opening hours and offered food, drinks and live music to build on the momentum.

ArtsHub visited the Samcheong neighbourhood on 4 September, where the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Seoul offered free entry to paid exhibitions, a little art book market and live events. Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists was a highlight, with 130 artworks fitted into a relatively compact gallery layout.

Kukje Gallery x ArtReview co-hosted an event that gave away free beer, corn dogs (the Korean version) and ice-cream until midnight. By 9.30pm it was already packed inside the gallery and the crowd flooded out into its backyard, where the mini food festival kept moods high and conversations going. Was it a good environment to see art? No. Did it matter? Not really.

The Samsung Family’s Leeum Museum

Run by South Korea’s wealthiest conglomerate, the Samsung family and its Samsung Foundation of Culture, the Leeum Museum of Art is an exceptional institution. Its two current exhibitions, Anicka Yi’s There Exists Another Evolution, But In This One and Dream Screen are polished displays ripe for exploration.

Inside the darkened belly of the Museum, Yi engineers bacteria, high-density foam, tempura flowers and optical fibre among a plethora of materials into mesmerising works. Her material investigations lean into deception, giving life to mechanics and creating mystery through ambiguous but suggestive artwork titles such as Home In 30 Days, Don’t Wash (2015) and Feeling is a Skill (2015).

Down a set of escalators, the gallery gives way to a purpose-built residence within its walls that resembles the Winchester Mystery House, with each room hosting an array of artworks by 26 artists and teams. Together they evoke a sense of parallel universes, realities within a reality. The entire exhibition is grounded in horror, more the psychological kind than gore, and offers more to discover than ArtsHub‘s one-hour visit allowed.

Both exhibitions run until 29 December 2024 and the Leeum Museum also boasts a rich permanent collection of traditional Korean art.

SongEun Art Space featuring the Pinault Collection

Works drawn from the collection of French billionaire François Pinault are on display at Seoul’s SongEun Art Space in Portrait of a Collection. It’s the first time in 13 years that the Pinault Collection has been shown in Seoul, with its last Asian debut, Agony and Ecstasy also presented at SongEun in 2011.

Though free to enter, booking a timed-entry for foreign visitors is a disaster unless you have a local phone number and the country’s communication app, Naver, installed. If you don’t have a local friend to help you out, the only option is to contact the gallery in advance by email.

But all that trouble is worth it, if not for the beauty of the sun-filled brutalist architecture alone.

Portrait of a Collection stands out for its paintings and brings together some of the best in the craft. Miriam Cahn and Peter Doig show mastery of colour and mood in their raw and unsettling compositions, evoking in this writer an emotional response that seemed to have lain dormant for some time. Works by Marlene Dumas, who had a solo presented by the Pinault Collection at Palazzo Grassi in Venice 2022, remain as potent as they did two years ago, and in this context are placed in conversation with pieces by Luc Tuymans.

Ryan Gander’s philosophy-musing mice – also shown as part of the NGV Triennial – continues to draw crowds at SongEun, while Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ light bulb installations representing loss and remembrance are situated comfortably throughout the gallery spaces.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s ephemeral and moving underground installation, OPERA (QM. 15) (2016), takes the show to a new height. The artist embodies opera diva Maria Callas, who hovers like a supernatural being with her voice reverberating across the dark space.

What can I say – Pinault, money well spent.

Portrait of a Collection: Selected Works from the Pinault Collection runs until 23 November.

An otherworldly exhibition in an abandoned inn

It’s by pure chance that ArtsHub came across Platypuses and Unicorns at BOAN1942 while exploring the Gyeongbokgung Palace area, and it was one of the most delightful encounters of the trip.

Nestled in one of the most important districts for artists in old time Korea, BOAN1942 served as an inn for seven decades, and in 2007 established itself as “a base for culture production”. The interior has a gritty, rundown vibe that fits like a glove with paintings resembling a landscape of micro-organisms, installations featuring deep-sea motifs and eerie videos by local artists.

There is also a great book shop connected to the art space on level 2, a café and accommodation area for cultural makers.

ArtsHub also travelled to Gwangju during this visit to South Korea and a separate review of the 15th Gwangju Biennale will be published soon.