Thursday, September 3, 2026

The 10 Best Booths at Frieze Seoul 2026
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The fifth edition of Frieze Seoul opened at the COEX in Gangnam on Wednesday, September 2nd, hosting 133 galleries from 30 countries. By the start of the fair’s VIP opening at 11 a.m., three lines poured out of the entrances, with visitors moving as frenetically as South Korea’s stock market. The energy was high, and it continued throughout the day.

Returning international heavyweight exhibitors such as Hauser & Wirth and Pace Gallery were joined by Seoul mainstays Gallery Hyundai and Kukje Gallery, which mounted thoughtfully curated presentations. Still, many exhibitors appeared to hedge their bets with painting-heavy booths anchored by a statement sculpture.

More consequential were this year’s curatorial shifts. Replacing Frieze Masters, Spotlight revisited overlooked 20th-century practices, while Material Practice brought together ceramics, textiles, glass, metal, wood, and paper. Focus, the section dedicated to younger galleries, expanded beyond Asia for the first time, presenting 16 emerging galleries likely to appeal to newer collectors.

Several galleries also timed their selections to Korea’s packed institutional calendar, including Koo Jeong A’s Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art solo, Do Ho Suh’s MMCA survey, as well as several other names featured in the current Gwangju and Busan biennials. Alongside a week of “Neighborhood Nights” gallery events and the openings of the Park Seo-Bo Museum and Seo-Seoul Museum of Art, the growth of Korea’s cultural infrastructure was felt across town.

Corporate leaders, celebrities, curators, and directors circulated through the aisles on the fair’s VIP day, reflecting the fair’s growing role within Seoul’s cultural ecosystem. On the floor below, partner fair Kiaf SEOUL echoed a similar enthusiasm. By the end of Frieze’s VIP day, several galleries reported high-value transactions, led by Thaddaeus Ropac’s sale of Adrian Ghenie’s Figure with Funerary Stele (2026), for €1.1 million ($1.3 million). Read Artsy’s day one Frieze Seoul sales report here, and check back next week for our full roundup.

Here, we present the 10 best booths from Frieze Seoul 2026.

Lehmann Maupin

Booth A25

With works by Do Ho Suh, Kim Yun Shin, Sung Neung Kyung, Guimi You, and others

Past a bustling entrance, the first thing visitors encounter is the pale, quiet architecture of Do Ho Suh’s home sculptures at Lehmann Maupin. On the front wall, Perfect Home—Horsham, New York, New York, Sant’Angelo in Pontano… (2026), a translucent polyester work, layers the many places Suh has lived into a single home structure.

The booth moves between earlier and recent thread drawings and fabric sculptures from Suh’s “Family Cuddle” and “Scaled Behaviour” series, with a smaller section devoted to works by other gallery artists such as Kim Yun Shin and Guimi You.

The Body Shimmer (Trevor, the Wishing), 2026
Dominic Chambers
Lehmann Maupin

My Heart Is on the Court, 2026
Mr.
Lehmann Maupin

dna:study, 2025
McArthur Binion
Lehmann Maupin

The Body Shimmer (Tre, the Passionate), 2026
Dominic Chambers
Lehmann Maupin

koi carp, 2 botanical gardens LA, 2025
Billy Childish
Lehmann Maupin

At Night, 2025
Chantal Joffe
Lehmann Maupin

Add Two Add One Divide Two Divide One 2023-28, 2023
Kim Yun Shin
Lehmann Maupin

Prayer of the Soul 2014-65, 2014
Kim Yun Shin
Lehmann Maupin

Unsurprisingly, it was among the VIP day’s hardest booths to enter. Singaporean gallery STPI is also showing Suh’s work elsewhere at the fair, making him one of this edition’s defining presences. While his international reputation has attracted serious collectors for decades, his frequently sold-out MMCA survey that is currently on view appears to have brought in a newer audience, too.

Suh’s name kept surfacing in the group chats around me, where people traded messages about barely getting close enough to ask a price. That enthusiasm carried through to sales. “We placed a significant number of works on the preview day, with the majority acquired by Asian clients,” said the gallery’s co-founder Rachel Lehmann.

Duarte Sequeira

Booth A03

With works by Nell Brookfield, Edmond Brooks-Beckman, André Butzer, Petra Cortright, Tom Howse, Patrick H Jones, Hyunjin Kim, Julian Opie, Paolo Salvador, and Yooyun Yang

For its second Frieze Seoul appearance, Portuguese gallery Duarte Sequeira brings together its international and Korean programs. It opened in Seoul four years ago—first in Cheongdam, before moving to Hannam last year—after entering the Korean market through the Kiaf and Art Busan fairs.

Its roots run deeper in Portugal, where the Sequeira family has worked with British stalwart Julian Opie for some three decades. Here, the artist’s pared-down figures appear alongside paintings by Korean artists Yooyun Yang and Hyunjin Kim.

The booth’s sharpest discovery is London painter Patrick H Jones, whose recent Seoul solo show, “Crowded Emotions,” sold out, according to the gallery. His five new paintings begin with everyday scenes that he cuts apart and recombines into unstable narratives.

In Fools again and Fed up again (both 2026), figures sit behind windshields and other barriers, their gestures wavering between comedy and aggression. Jones compares emboldened online behavior to road rage: Both arise from the sense of protection created by a screen. His tightly cropped compositions turn that distance into uneasy studies of how readily judgment becomes distorted.

Gaa Gallery

Booth F1

With works by Johanna Seidel

At a corner of the fair’s Focus section, visitors to Gaa Gallery’s booth were welcomed by the gallerist—and his eight-month-old son, watching from a stroller. It was a fittingly personal introduction to the pastoral yet slightly surreal paintings of Dresden-based German artist Johanna Seidel.

With spaces in Cologne and New York, the gallery is making its Frieze Seoul debut in the section for galleries founded since 2014. This is also Seidel’s first presentation in Korea, following a strong response at Art Basel Hong Kong earlier this year.

Sibyls Prelude, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Heatwaves, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Something From the Attic, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Against the Shore, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Rodeo Town, 2025
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Windmills, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Tempest, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Double, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Jewel Thief, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

New York Sour, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

All My Daughters, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

The Whole Band (the Singer), 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

The Whole Band (the Pianist), 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Pop Stars, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Hyacinth, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Soft Black Stars, 2026
Johanna Seidel
Gaa Gallery

Her scenes initially appear familiar: Figures occupy bedrooms and domestic interiors, while animals, plants, and celestial forms hover nearby. Look longer, and they drift somewhere between everyday life and dreams. Siennas, violets, and murky greens give the oil paintings an unexpectedly soft, almost porous quality.

Most are modest enough to fit above a bed. Jewel Thief (2026), a portrait of a woman holding a cigar on a tall, narrow canvas, is priced at €3,000 ($3,478). While I was there, a collector who had purchased another small painting was already asking whether they could take it home that day.

LAMB

Booth F11

With works by Ayla Tavares

Deeper inside the Focus section, opposite a booth awash in bright color, Brazilian artist Ayla Tavares’s quiet ceramic installation pulls visitors in. Small, cream-colored objects dot the booth’s three walls like a constellation.

At the center, The pineal eye (2026)—a ceramic sculpture fitted with a light mechanism—glows softly from a pedestal. From afar, the presentation feels spare and restrained; up close, its delicate drawings, varied textures, and intricate surfaces reveal themselves.

The pineal eye, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

The Egg and the Time, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Elegy for the Next Season, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Icarus and the Parker probe 1, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Icarus and the Parker probe 2, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

The first drawing, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Hoso sol , 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Helioseismology, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

waltz of the days, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Hou Yeo e os dez sois, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

The solar wind, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

A total eclipse , 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Amaterasu and the cave, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Sister Sun, Brother Moon, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

heliac fabulations, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Naked eye 1, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

Naked eye 2, 2026
Ayla Tavares
LAMB

London-based gallery LAMB, making its Frieze Seoul debut, presents the installation as “A Dance Between Two Suns.” Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1990 and now based in Madrid, Tavares draws on archaeological objects, sacred artifacts, and everyday forms.

Starting from a Thanaka tablet from Myanmar and Georges Bataille’s short Surrealist text The Solar Anus, the artist uses the notion of the sun to connect body, matter, light, and knowledge. Works are priced between $6,000 and $15,000, with The pineal eye offered at $15,000.

The presentation follows the artist’s recent inclusion in a Hammer Museum group show, which gallery founder and director Lucinda Bellm said generated strong interest among L.A. collectors. Tavares will also participate in Brazil’s first pavilion at this month’s Gwangju Biennale.

David Zwirner

Booth B9

With works by Francis Alÿs, Mamma Andersson, Lucas Arruda, Ruth Asawa, Katherine Bernhardt, Michaël Borremans, Suzan Frecon, Scott Kahn, Yayoi Kusama, Giorgio Morandi, Walter Price, Gerhard Richter, Dana Schutz, Steven Shearer, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Wolfgang Tillmans, Luc Tuymans, and Rose Wylie

Anchored by the late Yayoi Kusama centerpiece sculpture, FLOWERS THAT SPEAK ALL ABOUT MY HEART GIVEN TO THE SKY (2018), David Zwirner brought the household names expected from a gallery of its caliber, from Giorgio Morandi and Ruth Asawa to Luc Tuymans. Kusama had passed away just a week before the fair.

Alongside neighboring Hauser & Wirth, Zwirner’s booth was a display in which museum curators from around the world seemed most inclined to stop, look, and linger.

Sud, 1986
Francis Alÿs
David Zwirner

Rio Amazonas, Septiembre 22, 2025
Francis Alÿs
David Zwirner

Behind the Curtain, 2014
Mamma Andersson
David Zwirner

Pond, 2019
Mamma Andersson
David Zwirner

Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), 2026
Lucas Arruda
David Zwirner

Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), 2026
Lucas Arruda
David Zwirner

Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting), 2001
Gerhard Richter
David Zwirner

The Stage, 2010
Luc Tuymans
David Zwirner

The Moody Muse, 2025
Steven Shearer
David Zwirner

Napoleon (Film Notes), 2026
Rose Wylie
David Zwirner

Vola, 2025
Katherine Bernhardt
David Zwirner

Shoot!, 2026
Walter Price
David Zwirner

purple ocher moroccan, 2021
Suzan Frecon
David Zwirner

Still, its blue-chip familiarity did not make the presentation feel predictable. A delicate 1976 bronze-wire sculpture by Asawa offered a counterpoint to Morandi’s hushed 1942 painting and the louder contemporary works around them.

By the end of preview day, the gallery reported placing a significant number of works, including a new Lucas Arruda painting with an Asian museum. “South Korea has a sophisticated collector base with a deep knowledge of Western artists,” said associate partner James Green, noting that many visitors required “little introduction to the works.”

Mendes Wood DM

Booth B8

With works by Laís Amaral, Lucas Arruda, Eunnam Hong, Josi, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Tomie Ohtake, Precious Okoyomon, Lygia Pape, Marina Perez Simão, Paulo Nazareth, Paulo Nimer Pjota, Mário Rubinski, Luiz Roque, Paula Siebra, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, and Kishio Suga

Returning to Frieze Seoul after sitting out last year, Mendes Wood DM brings a booth that takes a moment to unpack. Lucas Arruda’s monochrome painting recalls deep water at dusk, while Korean painter Eunnam Hong’s Bomb (2026) places a quiet threat beneath images of luxury and desire.

Then there is Precious Okoyomon’s shy bear sculpture, looking back at the view with its claws out and flames in its eyes, alongside a 1961 “blind painting” by Japanese Brazilian artist Tomie Ohtake.

Delineation of Circulating Scenery, 1993
Kishio Suga
Mendes Wood DM

23.5 centimeter-long Air, 2007
Kishio Suga
Mendes Wood DM

Tangled Times, 2026
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Mendes Wood DM

Profile, 2026
Luiz Roque
Mendes Wood DM

I pray for that which I cannot hold, 2026
Precious Okoyomon
Mendes Wood DM

Untitled | Sem título, 2025
Paulo Monteiro
Mendes Wood DM

Untitled | Sem título, 2025
Paulo Monteiro
Mendes Wood DM

Shrub (ii), 2025
Sanam Khatibi
Mendes Wood DM

nó em dia de chuva amadurece sapecado, 2026
Josi
Mendes Wood DM

Untitled (Raio de Sol series 4) | Sem Título (série Raio de Sol 4), 2024
Sonia Gomes
Mendes Wood DM

quarta-feira, 2025
Adriano Costa
Mendes Wood DM

A boba, 2025
Adriano Costa
Mendes Wood DM

The mix could feel scattered, but gallery partner Martin Aguilera aptly described the gallery’s approach as “cross-pollination.” And the booth also keeps one eye on Korea’s curatorial calendar, not just its market: Works by Laís Amaral and Josi will appear in the Gwangju Biennale’s inaugural Brazilian pavilion, while Luiz Roque is participating in the Busan Biennale.

Aguilera noted that the gallery’s Korean collectors are “very loyal” and “very consistent,” but said he still hopes to surprise them with this year’s booth display. Asked what might do so this year, he pointed to works by Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, once little known even in Brazil, represented here by two small paintings from the 1980s.

Axel Vervoordt Gallery

Booth B17

With works by Kimsooja, Kim Lim, Shi Zhiying, and Bosco Sodi

Kimsooja’s “Bottari” is what first draws visitors into Axel Vervoordt Gallery’s booth. Most will recognize the artist’s signature colorful bundle sculpture immediately. The surprise comes when they realize that the nearby ceramics—delicately punctured as if stitched with an invisible thread—are also hers.

Seen alongside the light-absorbing black form of Deductive Object, they show how her familiar gestures of wrapping and sewing continue through clay, light, and sculpture.

The gallery’s presentation this year feels like an equally seamless transition. As Sabrina Hung of the gallery explained, its earlier program leaned more heavily toward 20th-century practices, while its roster has increasingly expanded into contemporary art.

Having previously participated in Frieze Seoul through its Masters section, the gallery now enters the fair’s main section, bringing its historical eye into conversation with that growing contemporary program.

Kim Lim’s sculpture Pegasus (Bronze) (1962) distills the mythical horse into a few upright curves, while new paintings by Shi Zhiying and Bosco Sodi take very different routes through time and texture. Yet the combination feels entirely in character for a gallery long associated with quiet materiality and cross-generational dialogue.

Like the booth itself, its roster links tradition and the present without making much noise about it. Works in the presentation range in price from $50,000 to $600,000.

drawingRoom

Booth C16

With works by Yoo Jung Ellie Choi, Sanoh Lee, Sooji Lee, Leebinsoyeon, Donghoon Rhee, Im Sungoo, Miyeon Yi, and Jinsik Yoo

If visitors want to see young Korean artists without being grouped by a single aesthetic, local gallery drawingRoom’s booth is a highlight stop.

Following its Frieze Seoul debut with Im Sungoo in last year’s Focus section, the gallery returns with eight artists working across sculpture, ceramics, painting, photography, and drawing. What connects them is less a recognizable style than a shared attentiveness to materials.

The Line I Wear, 2026
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

흔적 Vestige, 2026
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

Misnamed, 2026
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

The Lovers 4, 2025
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

Parade 9, 2023
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

Messenger 18, 2025
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

Flamed Self 2, 2024
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

Therianthrope(Tiger) 4, 2024
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

Mr. Bourgeois 2, 2024
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

Beyond the Fence, 2025
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

Stolen Garden, 2025
Jinsik Yoo
drawingRoom

이케바나 연습–배치 19 Ikebana Practice–Arrangment 19, 2026
Donghoon Rhee
drawingRoom

이케바나 연습–배치 23 Ikebana Practice–Arrangment 23, 2026
Donghoon Rhee
drawingRoom

The Cashier Said, "No Plastic Bag, Honey.", 2026
Leebinsoyeon
drawingRoom

Everyone Read "Please Do Not Touch.", 2026
Leebinsoyeon
drawingRoom

Airport Market Haul, 2026
Leebinsoyeon
drawingRoom

Where Are You Really From?, 2026
Leebinsoyeon
drawingRoom

With Attentive Ears, He Awaits the Confession Yet to Be Spoken, 2024
Miyeon Yi
drawingRoom

Little Toad, Take My Old Home and Bring Me a New One, 2024
Miyeon Yi
drawingRoom

오지 않은 것을 마중 나간 밤 Meeting the Unarrived, 2026
Miyeon Yi
drawingRoom

Unwanted Advice, 2026
Miyeon Yi
drawingRoom

Schadenfreude, 2026
Miyeon Yi
drawingRoom

Plato's Cave, 2026
Miyeon Yi
drawingRoom

예쁜 맘 예쁜 꿈 Keepsake, 2026
Miyeon Yi
drawingRoom

Saint Veronica, 2026
Miyeon Yi
drawingRoom

저 언덕 The Other Shore, 2026
Sanoh Lee
drawingRoom

호흡 Dew Breath, 2026
Sanoh Lee
drawingRoom

인접한 땅 Parallel Realm, 2026
Sanoh Lee
drawingRoom

깃꽃이 흩날린 곳곳의 한 날 A Day Among Blooming Plume Blossoms, 2026
Sanoh Lee
drawingRoom

만상이 고요하여 우는 새들 Birds Weep As All Things Fall Still, 2026
Sanoh Lee
drawingRoom

꽃이 피는 이쪽 언덕으로부터 From This Blooming Mound, 2026
Sanoh Lee
drawingRoom

건너의 긴 하늘로 돌아간다 Returning to the Sky Beyond, 2026
Sanoh Lee
drawingRoom

Composition 04(Left), Composition 05(Right), 2021
Sooji Lee
drawingRoom

Composition02 (left), 2021
Sooji Lee
drawingRoom

Emptying_01, 2026
Sooji Lee
drawingRoom

Emptying_02, 2026
Sooji Lee
drawingRoom

Emptying_03, 2026
Sooji Lee
drawingRoom

Emptying_04, 2026
Sooji Lee
drawingRoom

Emptying_05, 2026
Sooji Lee
drawingRoom

Sedimented Loft 모래 다락 5, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

Sedimented Loft 모래 다락 6, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

Sedimented Loft 모래 다락 7, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

Sedimented Loft 모래 다락 8, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

Sedimented Loft 모래 다락 9, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

Sedimented Loft 모래 다락 10, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

Sedimented Loft 모래 다락 11, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

Sedimented Loft 모래 다락 12, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

당신의 영해_상 Your Territorial Waters_Upper, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

돌아오기 위해 떠나는 곳 The Ground of Leaving and Returning, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

웅덩이를 다지는 사람 One Who Packs the Hollows, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

거꾸로 피어난 담장 The Wall That Took Root Upside Down, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

기울어진 방 The Tilted Room, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

벽장속의 집을 위한 드로잉 01 Drawing for The House Inside the Closet 01, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

벽장속의 집을 위한 드로잉 02 Drawing for The House Inside the Closet 02, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

벽장속의 집을 위한 드로잉 03 Drawing for The House Inside the Closet 03, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

벽장속의 집을 위한 드로잉 04 Drawing for The House Inside the Closet 04, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

벽장속의 집을 위한 드로잉 05 Drawing for The House Inside the Closet 05, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

벽장속의 집을 위한 드로잉 06 Drawing for The House Inside the Closet 06, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

벽장속의 집을 위한 드로잉 07 Drawing for The House Inside the Closet 07, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

벽장속의 집을 위한 드로잉 08 Drawing for The House Inside the Closet 08, 2026
Im Sungoo
drawingRoom

Time Hung on the Wall, 2026
Yoo Jung Ellie Choi
drawingRoom

Shared Ground, 2026
Yoo Jung Ellie Choi
drawingRoom

Morning, Louie!, 2026
Yoo Jung Ellie Choi
drawingRoom

Three Figures, 2026
Yoo Jung Ellie Choi
drawingRoom

In Here, Out There, 2026
Yoo Jung Ellie Choi
drawingRoom

On plinths at the center, Donghoon Rhee’s playful carved-wood sculptures and Jinsik Yoo’s organic ceramics establish an unexpected rhythm, while works in paper, thread, and paint extend along the surrounding walls.

Visitors would do well to look behind the booth’s partition, where Im’s The Tilted Room (2026), a densely layered paper-based work, waits almost in hiding. Built from compressed paper and graphite, it carries fragments of domestic spaces erased by Korea’s rapid redevelopment.

The presentation continues beyond the fair at drawingRoom’s Seoul space, where a related exhibition, “Rigorous Hands,” is on view through September 12th.

Gagosian

Booth C10

With works by Damien Hirst

From Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho’s nearby seating installation, where tired visitors can take a break, the orderly dots of Damien Hirst’s “Spots” paintings and centrifugal bursts of his “Spin” paintings come directly into view. The booth feels like the section’s unofficial anchor.

Inside, those instantly recognizable paintings give way to Nemesis (2007), a clinically ordered work from the “Pill Cabinets” series, and faux archaeological relics from the “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable” series.

Hirst’s MMCA survey drew more than 500,000 visitors this spring while also stirring debate over its blockbuster scale, public spending, and critical framing—perhaps fitting for an artist who has never been far from controversy.

By the end of the day, the gallery had placed “significant works” from the presentation to collections including a museum in Asia. Indeed, the “Spots” and “Spin” paintings were attracting the most visitors—and camera phones. For anyone wanting to look beyond the spectacle, Gagosian’s detailed online presentation offers short texts and videos on each series.

UNAW Gallery

Booth S13

With works by Gyutae Hwang

Photography is hard to find at Frieze Seoul this year. For its debut at the fair, UNAW Gallery joins the new Spotlight section with Korean artist Gyutae Hwang, tracing his work from the 1960s through the 2000s.

The gallery’s executive director, Soyoung Ryu, emphasized Hwang’s historical importance as an early figure who continually tested the boundaries of what photography in Korea could be.

Embankment Path, 1960s
Hwang Gyutae
UNAW Gallery

UNTITLED, 1969-1970
Hwang Gyutae
UNAW Gallery

Myeongdong Cathedral, 1960s
Hwang Gyutae
UNAW Gallery

Burning the City II, 1969
Hwang Gyutae
UNAW Gallery

Panacea, 2000
Hwang Gyutae
UNAW Gallery

Blow Up, 1960s
Hwang Gyutae
UNAW Gallery

BIG BANG THEORY, 1995-2000
Hwang Gyutae
UNAW Gallery

Spring (A Girl Going to Gather Wild Greens), Hongdae, 1960s
Hwang Gyutae
UNAW Gallery

The presentation moves from small black-and-white examples of figurative and representative photography toward images that become increasingly difficult to call photographs at all. For Burning the City II (1969), Hwang physically burned the film, producing an abstraction that resembles fireworks exploding above warped city buildings—at once celebratory and destructive.

Later works enlarge, repeat, and digitally distort their source images. Ryu chose Panacea (2000) as her favorite for its sharp social critique and unusual palette.

My eyes, however, kept returning to the early photographs, priced at roughly one-seventh as much, at around ₩3 million ($2,205)—especially Myeongdong Cathedral (1960s), a quiet scene that captures the minor dramas of a single day in a rapidly modernizing Korea.



from Artsy News https://ift.tt/4eTibCX

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