Western Galleries Expand in Seoul as Korean Art Market Heats Up
Outposts of Western blue-chip galleries are popping up all through Seoul because the Korean artwork market, pushed by a brand new technology of collectors, continues to attract growing consideration. The Paris–based mostly worldwide gallery Perrotin has revealed plans to ascertain a second outpost within the metropolis, becoming a member of the department it established there in 2016. The brand new gallery will occupy 2,700 sq. toes in Seoul’s posh Gangnam district and is slated to open in September. Additionally increasing within the metropolis is megagallery Tempo, which earlier this month revealed that it might add a brand new ground-floor area to its 8,500-square-foot gallery within the metropolis’s Hannam neighborhood, which it solely just lately opened.
Sparking pleasure particularly is the hotly anticipated inaugural version of Frieze Seoul, going down this September alongside the long-running KIAF Seoul and its new spin-off, KIAF Plus. Talking with Artnet News, Alice Lung, a Seoul-based companion at Perrotin, famous that “Seoul is certainly probably the most vibrant and thrilling marketplace for now.” Lung cited world consideration to different Korean inventive industries, resembling motion pictures and Okay-pop, as propelling the market. “The most important adjustments we see through the years is the demographic of collectors and the variety of individuals amassing artwork,” she mentioned. “Earlier than individuals have been very targeted on the dansaekhwa motion of artists however now, there’s an explosion of younger rising artists from all aspects of life in Korea, and the brand new patrons are very bullish about shopping for these new rising skills.”
Perrotin will launch its new department with a present of oil-on-linen work by the Los Angeles-based artist Emma Webster on September 2, the day Frieze Seoul and each KIAFs open. Different current entrants to Korea’s capital metropolis embody the New York–based mostly Gladstone Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, König Galerie, Thaddeus Ropac, and Varied Small Fires, whose presence signifies their operators’ perception within the sustained viability of the artwork market there.
