Morning calm and soft power

Frieze Seoul 2025

If there is one country that has mastered the art of soft power, it is South Korea. In just a few years, the “Land of Morning Calm” has become a global cultural reference point, especially for younger generations. First came the tidal wave of its pop music, K-Pop, followed by the worldwide craze for Korean cosmetics, promising skin as flowless as on smartphone filters. Even in animation, Netflix recently set an all-time record, according to Variety: 236 million views for K-Pop Demon Hunters, a film brimming with South Korean cultural references.

Frieze Seoul

The visual arts are no exception. From September 3 to 6, 2025, Frieze Seoul returned for its fourth edition, this year hosting 121 participants. According to its director, Patrick Lee: “For about five years now, the authorities have done an excellent job in raising the visibility of Korean art. They give grants to galleries so they can participate in international fairs, or help artists show at major institutions like Tate or the Guggenheim, and they support the publication of catalogues.”

K Pop stars at the fair

Frieze Seoul 2025

At the opening, he accompanied the First Lady of Korea as well as the city’s mayor through the fair. Pop stars were spotted at several booths, including that of French dealer Kamel Mennour, where they lingered before a painting by Lee Ufan—a Korean artist who bridges Asian and Western concepts—that later sold for €600,000.

Korea/ China

A longtime observer of the Asian art world comments: “In Korea, unlike in China, all forces are aligned in support of the arts: the government, the municipalities, and the great family-run conglomerates that build museums and amass significant collections regardless of the economic climate. In China, by contrast, the market is currently depressed after the collapse of the real-estate sector, once a key refuge for investment across all social classes.”

Adrian Villar Rojas

What strikes most visitors to Seoul during Frieze is the quality of programming coordinated between museums and galleries. The Art Sonje Center—founded by the Daewoo industrial group—invited one of today’s most ambitious artists, Argentine-born New Yorker Adrián Villar Rojas (b. 1980). In a high-tech, computer-generated installation, he presented monumental clusters of industrial objects and living trees, planted upside down: an image of chaos, both beautiful and terrifying. Villar Rojas is primarily a museum artist (See here and here interviews of him); at auction, his record price dates from 2021 at €89,000.

Lee Bul

The Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art—created by the Samsung Foundation of Culture and designed by Mario Botta, Jean Nouvel, and Rem Koolhaas—this year showcases the Korean artist Lee Bul (b. 1964)—rarely seen at home but celebrated abroad. For years she has envisioned a hyper-technological world.

One of her suspended sculptures, assembled from industrial cast-offs yet strangely decorative, fetched €152,000 in 2024. At Frieze Seoul, Hauser & Wirth, which began representing her in March 2025, offered another suspended work for $400,000. It was sold on the fair’s first day to an Asian foundation.

Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford

The Amorepacific Museum of Art—funded by eponymous Korea’s leading beauty company—presented, following a showing at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof, (See here the report about the show with an interview of the artist) the work of American star Mark Bradford (b. 1961). His auction record, for a monumental piece, stands at $9.7 million. At Frieze Seoul, Hauser & Wirth again sold one of his large-scale triptychs for $4.5 million. Bradford, who represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, often works in formats resembling painting but crafted from a variety of unorthodox materials.

Tadao Ando+ Antony Gormley

Meanwhile, two hours from Seoul, the remarkable Museum SAN in Wonju—initiated by the Hansol Group, known among other things for paper production—unveiled in June 2025 a permanent installation marrying a saucer-shaped building by Tadao Ando with sculptures by British artist Antony Gormley (b. 1950)( See here a report about Antony Gormley . At the fair, his works were offered through White Cube and Thaddaeus Ropac, ranging from £50,000 for drawings to £550,000 for sculptures.

Crisis

But in Seoul, despite this ambitious offering, local market players are unanimous: the crisis is palpable.

Charles Kim, director of Seoul’s powerhouse Kukje Gallery, reported selling 15 works on opening day. Yet he cautions: “The international perception of the Korean market is somewhat idealized. Apart from acquisitions by conglomerates, the average ceiling is usually around $200,000. And most collectors live in  apartments with low ceilings, which don’t lend themselves to the scale of much international contemporary art.”

Trend for discounts

Even with some few spectacular results announced on the fair’s first day, the general trend was one of frantic requests for discounts.

Antony Gormley

Mark Glimcher

Mark Glimcher, president of Pace—among the world’s most powerful galleries, and present in Seoul—acknowledges: “The Korean economy is still posting very strong numbers, and the country gives the arts a central role. It’s one of the few places without a tax on art. But more broadly, we as galleries will have to adapt to the new reality, much as the music, entertainment, and fashion industries have had to.”

Gagosian and Murakami

At Frieze Seoul, the multinational powerhouse Gagosian spotlighted Japanese star Takashi Murakami (b. 1962). At the peak of his fame in 2008, one of his rare erotic sculptures reached a record €9.7 million. In Seoul, Gagosian opened a temporary gallery where his works were priced from $250,000  up to $1 million — and everything sold out. “Takashi is a phenomenon,” notes Gagosian’s Asia director Nick Simunovic. “We’ve sold a great many of his pieces in Asia, and prices on the primary market have risen steadily.”

Takashi Murakami

Jonathan Monk

Yet the most talked-about name at Frieze Seoul this year was American artist Jonathan Monk (b. 1969). A mischievous spirit, Monk delights in playing with concepts—including the art market itself. On the booth of Berlin-based Meyer Riegger, which has just partnered with Paris dealer Jocelyn Wolff to open a Seoul space this September, visitors encountered some thirty small watercolors.

€100 a painting

Each morning, as a kind of diary, the artist painted the rising sun—always different in form and color—paying homage to conceptual artist On Kawara, who marked time by painting nothing but the date of the day. In Seoul, Monk turned the rules of valuation on their head: each delicate watercolor was priced at just €100. They sold out instantly to an enthusiastic crowd. All the more noteworthy, since they recall works by celebrated artists whose pieces sell for tens of thousands of euros.