Art was in the air in Seoul during the first week of September when the city hosted two global art fairs, Frieze Seoul and Kiaf. Over five days, the two events attracted over 70,000 visitors from 46 countries. Galleries and museums in Seoul hosted special exhibitions and dinner parties all week to celebrate the occasion.
All-night parties and the collective frenzy surrounding the art fairs may have subsided with the sweltering heat in Seoul, but there are still plenty of exhibitions worth visiting this autumn. With the air crisp and leaves starting to lose their green, October is the perfect time in Seoul to take a stroll and enjoy art. These are the six art exhibitions to visit this fall.
Refik Anadol: Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive
Futura Seoul, a new exhibition space in Seoul’s Bukchon Hanok Village, opened earlier this month with a solo exhibition of Turkish-American media artist Refik Anadol, a pioneer in machine intelligence aesthetics. Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive is Anadol’s first solo exhibition in Asia, featuring innovative media works created using a generative AI model called LNM, developed by the Refik Anadol Studio. The exhibition offers viewers an immersive and breathtaking AI experience with installations that utilize visual data of more than 500 million images of nature, over 400 hours of sound data, and 500,000 fragrance molecules. The exhibition runs from Sept. 5 to Dec. 8.
Correspondence: Lee Ufan and Mark Rothko
Pace Gallery Seoul, located in the Hannam-dong neighborhood in Seoul, presents Correspondence: Lee Ufan and Mark Rothko, a two-artist exhibition curated by Korean painter and sculptor Lee Ufan in collaboration with the Rothko family. The exhibition, spanning two floors of the gallery, combines paintings from Lee’s Dialogue and Response series, made between 2018 and 2023, and major works by Mark Rothko, the American abstract painter best known for his color field paintings. The exhibition is on view from Sept. 4 to Oct. 26.
Do Ho Suh: Speculations
Art Sonje Center, a private art museum in Samcheong-dong, presents Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s works in Do Ho Suh: Speculations. Suh is well-known for re-creating architectural structures and objects using fabric. The exhibition aims to display the artist’s reflections on life, the world, and his imaginings of the future with works that transcend the physical constraints of reality. The exhibition is filled with his early sketches, architectural models, and videos encompassing the theme of “speculations.” Kim Sun-jung, the artistic director of the Art Sonje Center, described the exhibition as “like downloading the brain of Do Ho Suh.” The exhibition runs from Aug. 17 to Nov. 3
Sean Scully: Soul
Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul brings together works by Irish-born artist Sean Scully from Sept. 3 to Nov. 9. “The title of the exhibition, Soul, references both the city in which it takes place and the soulful nature of the work itself,” explained the gallery. The exhibition features a selection of new paintings, including the Wall of Light painting Kentish Town Blue Red, with steel-grey undertones that evoke the brooding light of the city surrounding his North London studio.
Nicolas Party: Dust
Hoam Museum of Art is not in Seoul, but close enough—the museum is located near a lake in Yongin, a city on the outskirts of Seoul—roughly an hour’s drive away. The museum presents a solo exhibition of Swiss visual artist Nicholas Party, showcasing the artist’s 48 existing paintings and sculptures and 20 new paintings. Dust is the New York-based artist’s first solo exhibition in Korea and his largest exhibition of work to date. The exhibition includes five large-scale pastel murals painted directly on the museum’s walls, created just for this occasion. Dust is on view from Aug. 31, 2024, to Jan. 19, 2025.
Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces
Berlin-based artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset presents over sixty works with five immersive installations at Spaces, an exhibition at the Amorepacific Museum of Art (APMA) in Seoul. The exhibition features a combination of existing and new works by the artists. Installations include a full-scale family house, a public swimming pool, a restaurant with an adjacent kitchen, and an artist’s studio. Visitors are invited to wander and get lost in Spaces, to piece together and discover new interpretations of everyday space. The exhibition runs from Sept. 3, 2024, to Feb. 23, 2025.
