Chic, sleek, and plenty of artworks to pique interests—the VIP preview of the Korean International Art Fair’s 2025 edition got underway in style on September 3rd.
Since the art fair’s inception in 2002, Kiaf SEOUL has matured into a formidable link between a vibrant domestic scene and global aspiration—a reflection of Seoul’s rise in the international art world. The fair is a cornerstone of Seoul Art Week, a stacked calendar of art events across the Korean capital that take place at well over 100 commercial galleries and more than 35 art museums in addition to a proliferation of non-profit and artist-run spaces.
Running until September 7th at the COEX exhibition center, this year’s edition gathers 175 galleries from more than 20 countries. For the fourth year in a row, Kiaf also shares the week’s tentpole slot with Frieze Seoul, which takes place over the same period in the upstairs section of the COEX. A handful of galleries are also taking part in both fairs, too, including local heavyweights Gallery Hyundai and Kukje Gallery.
From Floor to Chair, 2025
Jo Eunsi
GalleryMEME
The larger of the two fairs, Kiaf embraces a sweeping curatorial palette that ranges from bold installations to intimate studio presentations. Several provided cause for throngs of visitors to congregate around. PIGMENT Gallery’s presentation of works by Juan Miguel Quiñones was among these highlights, thanks to his irresistibly whimsical popsicle sculptures made of marble. Elsewhere, the fair provided plenty of works by familiar art world names from the international (Ugo Rondinone and Jenny Holzer) to Korea’s homegrown legends (Lee Ufan and Park Seo-Bo). Other star power came in the form of A-list guests, including K-pop luminaries such as BTS’s RM and South Korea’s first lady, Kim Hea Kyung.
Many dealers reminded Artsy of the continued attractiveness of Korea as an art collecting hub, with several pointing to its tax regime in particular, which treats artworks more favorably than many other asset classes. The country’s “art-for-tax” program, for instance, permits heirs to settle part of their inheritance tax obligations with significant artworks. “The Korean market is very vibrant, and one reason, I think, has to do with tax laws,” said Sundaram Tagore, whose gallery is showcasing a cross-program display of its artists, including Hiroshi Senju, Sohan Qadri, and Zheng Lu, among others.
Tagore emphasized that Seoul’s increasingly cross-cultural platform made Kiaf an ideal spot to learn about new artists. That proved to be the case even in the early hours of the VIP day, where handshakes were exchanged, business cards traded, and, above all, plenty of art was discovered.
Here, Artsy shares five standout artists who showed works at presentations in Kiaf 2025.
Bu Shi
B. 1993, Yunnan region, China. Lives and works in Florence, Italy
Showing with SARAHCROWN New York
Under the Stars, 2025
Bu Shi
SARAHCROWN New York
Displayed on the side wall of the New York gallery Sarah Crown’s booth is a constellation of small-scale nocturnal works by the Chinese artist Bu Shi that demand closer inspection. These detailed paintings use symbolic still life and interior motifs to create a dark, contemplative atmosphere that gives the feeling of a meditative riddle.
Under the Stars (2025), for instance, shows a framed cameo-style portrait in profile on a windowsill. Next to it rests an egg—an age-old symbol of origin, life, and potential—and a potted bonsai tree, its tips burning like candle flames. The work’s backdrop, a star-filled night sky, gives the still life a cosmic dimension, balancing these objects between the earthly and celestial planes. This creates a surreal meditation on mortality, time, and the cycles of existence.
Born in China and now based in Florence, Italy, Bu Shi trained at the College of Fine Arts in Szechuan, China, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy. That path helped crystallize a style in which Eastern and Western influences converge in harmony, merging Western still life and vanitas traditions with East Asian sensibilities of symbolism, minimalism, and quiet meditation.
“He investigates identity between East and West [with] objects,” gallery owner Sarah Crown told Artsy. “It’s very inquisitive, both of his own identity, but generally identity between two different worlds…His works are very interesting, because the longer you look at them, the more details you find.” The artist made his debut with the gallery in a 2024 group show and has mounted solo shows at Double Double Gallery and MOUart Gallery in Beijing, as well as CAR Gallery in Bologna.
Jo Eunsi
B.1999, South Korea. Lives and works in Seoul.
Showing with GalleryMEME
Tepid Impact, 2024
Jo Eunsi
GalleryMEME
A Study on Resemblance, 2024
Jo Eunsi
GalleryMEME
Korean artist Jo Eunsi explores constructed landscapes, fragmented objects, and layered symbolism in a charmingly chaotic series of works at the Seoul-based GalleryMEME’s booth. Painted on wood, these paintings are assembled in a range of frames—some look like benches and others like collapsed, three-legged stands. In their combination of natural and man-made forms, these works evoke the tension of human attempts to control unpredictable nature.
There’s a delightful playfulness to these works that jolts the viewer out of their expectations. For example, in Tepid Impact (2024), logs arranged like a campfire emit only smoke, while another section of the painting shows burnt-out matches and a cigarette lighter. Throughout the works, mathematical diagrams pull everyday or natural forms out of their usual contexts to make them feel strange and appear almost abstract.
The rising artist, who just closed her first solo show with the gallery in August, graduated in 2023 with a painting MFA from Ewha Womans University in Seoul. The gallery noted that the artist was included in Kiaf’s curated “Highlights” section. Each work at the gallery’s booth, which features artists such as Peter Delpechin and Heekyoung Jeon, is priced at under $10,000.
Minjeong Guem
B.1977, Seoul. Lives and works in Seoul.
Showing with LEE & BAE
Think, at forest, 2025
Minjeong Guem
LEE & BAE
Arranged on stands of wood and clustered in the center of the booth of Busan gallery LEE & BAE, a series of video sculpture works by Minjeong Guem merge architectural forms with moving images to create an immersive, contemplative effect.
Housed within a sharply angled, specially sculpted picture frame, these works give the impression of peering through a portal. The videos portray outdoor spaces, focusing on surfaces, such as mossy stone rendered in shifting tones of green, blue, and yellow. Here, the artist recalls natural processes, such as plant growth and erosion, as well as the distance created by the digital screen. The videos’ imagery echoes the concrete-seeming frame, blurring the boundary between screen content and physical object.
These pieces are typical of Guem’s practice, which investigates the spaces we inhabit—not just as inert backdrops, but as living, breathing participants, contributing to our sensory experience. By fusing sculpture and video as she does here, the artist draws together themes from architecture, nature, psyche, and time.
“I habitually deconstruct and modify where I am standing with my imagination,” said the artist in a statement. “The space that I transform is a video within the screen—I enjoy thinking and handling this in a material way.”
Guem, who rarely shows outside of Korea, will come as a discovery to many international visitors (including this writer). The artist received her BFA and MFA in sculpture from Seoul’s Hongik University in 2001, and has exhibited extensively in the Korean capital, with solo exhibitions at spaces including Hongeun Art Center and the Clayarch Gimhae Museum.
Xie Fan
B. 1983, Jiangyou, Szechuan Province, China. Lives and works in Beijing and Chengdu, China.
Showing with Galerie Marguo
Celestial Signs, 2025
Xie Fan
Galerie Marguo
A highlight of a standout booth from Galerie Marguo, this series of small-scale oil paintings on terracotta by Chinese artist Xie Fan each evokes a palm-sized universe.
The works distill celestial imagery into rich gradients of colors, suggesting both vastness and intimacy. In Celestial Signs (2025), the background transitions from deep crimson at the top to glowing amber at the bottom. At the center floats a small, delicate crescent moon, suspended in an expansive yet minimal color field. It evokes twilight skies but remains abstract enough to feel symbolic, like a memory or inner landscape.
The six works in the series offer a soothing meditation on cosmic dualities, whether sun or moon, day or night, warmth or coolness. The small scale of the works invites a slow reflection on cycles of time, nature, and the universe. “He’s using very natural materials [and], at the same time, painting very natural scenery…moons, solar eclipse, clouds, skies, fire, you know, very elemental,” said the gallery’s owner and co-founder, Vanessa Guo. “They’re not just beautiful, but there’s this connection when I look at it. It’s almost spiritual.”
Fan, who received his BFA from the Szechuan Fine Arts Institute in 2005, has exhibited at notable spaces in China, including at White Space Beijing and the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing. This presentation marks his first in Seoul. These small works are priced at €2,500 ($2,913) apiece.
Megan Menzies
B.1995, Essex, England. Lives and works in London.
Showing with LKIF Gallery
Train of Thought lll, 2025
Megan Menzies
LKIF Gallery
British artist Megan Menzies takes the experience of looking through a train window as the cue for a trio of paintings in the booth of Seoul’s LKIF Gallery. For a train traveller, landscapes blur, perspectives shift, and the outside world unfolds at a fast pace. This perspective is deployed as a metaphor for memory, imagination, and the flow of thoughts. These works, depicting a tree in front of a barn, all look as if they are snapshots taken a split second apart: They seem similar at first glance, but in fact contain multiple subtle variations when viewed more carefully.
The works build on a body of work Menzies began in 2021 that focuses on how emotional states affect perception and temporality. The brushwork has a hazy, almost trembling quality to it. Forms appear to dissolve and overlap, caught between stillness and motion. The paintings feel familiar yet elusive, creating a “film of memory,” as the artist has described it, in which images and emotions here connect and flow.
Menzies, who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2022 with an MA in painting, mounted a solo show with LKIF Gallery last year and, in 2023, was a part of MXM Galeria’s presentation at Artsy’s Foundations. The works at the booth here range from £1,300–£4,600 ($1,742–$6,166).
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/znePq62
No comments:
Post a Comment