Small galleries in Korea have multiplied at a panoramic tempo in recent times, buoyed by the arrival of Frieze Seoul in 2022 and the momentum of hallyu (the Korean Wave), turning town into one of many world’s most buzzed-about locations for gallery hopping.
Homegrown heavyweights, together with Kukje Gallery, Hyundai Gallery, and Arario Gallery, have lengthy anchored themselves in Samcheong-dong, an space beloved by worldwide guests for its winding alleys and centuries-old hanok homes, whereas worldwide gamers like Lehmann Maupin and Tempo Gallery are clustered within the central district Yongsan.
However a brand new wave of youthful galleries has gravitated towards much less typical settings like Euljiro, a neighborhood recognized for its industrial grit and hipster edge, and Haebangchon, as soon as a hillside of makeshift houses for migrants displaced after Japanese colonization and the Korean Struggle and now a multicultural enclave of cafes and bars. Some have even reimagined their very own houses as exhibition websites, blurring the road between home and public area.
These decisions are deliberate. Gwansoo Shin, founding father of Bathe Gallery, sees the scene’s vitality mendacity in small areas that “provide options to what got here earlier than.” For him, occupying nontraditional websites is a approach of resisting the white dice aesthetic.
The areas usually echo the neighborhoods round them. Hyejin Jee, founding father of Sangheeut Gallery in Haebangchon, mentioned she selected the neighborhood exactly for its layered historical past, which has lately been dubbed “Freedom Village” and is dwelling to a big worldwide neighborhood, together with English-speaking expats.
But, the power has met headwinds, with Korea’s home artwork market seemingly caught in a chronic stoop, slowed by a sluggish economic system. Jungwoo Lee, an artist who can be the director of WWNN gallery, mentioned some native galleries have already undergone a form of “gentrification,” or a return to the previous methods of doing issues, however those that weathered the storm have emerged stronger, primarily as a result of every has a definite program and collectively, they foster a wholesome spirit of competitors.
Under a have a look at 5 Seoul-based galleries whose singular approaches and dedication to nurturing singular creative voices makes them value watching.
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PS Heart
Picture Credit score: Courtesy PS Heart A nonprofit named Eulji Artwork Heart till 2022, PS Heart was lately reimagined by director Park Jiinn after years of watching artists abandon their practices—and after starting her personal path as a collector. Along with three companions, most of whom come from nonprofit backgrounds, she now runs PS Heart with an emphasis on nurturing real relationships: guiding new collectors firstly of their journey, whereas working carefully with artists to form every exhibition.
Housed on the highest ground of a former steel manufacturing facility in Euljiro, the gallery’s arched ceiling hints at its previous life. Surrounded by 9 different galleries and nonprofits inside strolling distance, it has turn out to be a pure cease on Seoul’s gallery-hopping circuit. Current packages embrace a solo exhibition by New York–based mostly Korean painter Park Yoo-ah, recognized for her portrait collection of Korean adoptees.
Throughout Frieze Seoul, the gallery will current a brand new physique of labor by Indian artist Naresh Kumar, created throughout his residency in Gwangju—a metropolis nonetheless scarred by the 1980 bloodbath, when the navy killed many pro-democracy demonstrators. Kumar’s works discover the persistence of collective motion, and the struggles that proceed to echo throughout borders and generations. Titled “March to March,” the exhibition runs August 26 to September 13.
Deal with: 3F, 18, Changgyeonggung-ro 5da-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul
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WWNN
Picture Credit score: Courtesy WWNN Quick for What We Want Now, WWNN was based in 2023 by artist Jungwoo Lee and curator Juhyun Oh. With a give attention to exhibiting set up artwork, interactive works, and site-specific tasks, the gallery’s program revolves round a central query: what it means to be human at the moment.
Lee and Oh consider that understanding the current requires voices that reduce throughout generations, and so they usually mount exhibitions during which rising artists are positioned in dialogue with mid-career artists. This strategy will be seen in a 2024 group exhibition, titled “Fairy Tales,” during which painter Luc Tuymans confirmed alongside artists a long time his junior.
Throughout Frieze Seoul, the gallery will collaborate with Japanese gallery CON, following a joint mission ultimately 12 months’s Artwork Collaboration Kyoto. From September 4–27, CON will take over WWNN’s area to stage a gaggle present of 4 artists from Japan and Sweden. Mixing hybrid sculpture and sound installations with portray and reconfigured city objects, the exhibition, titled “Fantasy within the Surprising,” will probe fragile connections between materials, reminiscence, and delusion.
Deal with: 20, Samcheong-ro 5-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul
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Bathe Gallery
Picture Credit score: Courtesy Bathe Gallery With a background in exhibition design and manufacturing, artist Gwansoo Shin based Bathe Gallery in 2023 as an area to check formidable and radical types of artwork. For Shin, the gallery is much less about displaying objects than about staging significant encounters.
That ethos got here into focus with “SUCCESSION 0.1,” an exhibition during which artist Hyein Min remodeled the area right into a labyrinth of momentary picket partitions for pictures, video, and sculpture. When the present ended, Canadian artist Simon Shim-Sutcliffe repurposed the buildings into a protracted bridge-like desk. Over the course of every week, the gallery turned a web site of course of and play, the place guests shared dinners and, on the ultimate night time, a celebration.
Bathe’s present exhibition, on view till September 14, will function Shanghai-based artist Chen Ruofan, presenting a large-scale set up that transforms manufacturing facility sawdust into each a visceral setting that appears on the hidden toll of labor and environmental neglect.
Deal with: GF, 61, Duteopbawi-ro Yonsan-gu, Seoul
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Sangheeut Gallery
Picture Credit score: Courtesy Sangheeut Gallery After working at blue-chip galleries together with Thaddaeus Ropac and Kukje Gallery, Hyejin Jee based Sangheeut, the one gallery in Haebangchon, in 2021. Jee envisions the gallery as a platform for tales of her technology, giving artists room to experiment with codecs that really feel much less tied to business stress. Sangheeut has launched rising voices comparable to Tokyo-based American artist Michael Rikio Ming Hee Ho, Indonesian multidisciplinary artist Maruto Ardi, and Korean sculptor Eugene Jung.
From August 28 to September 27, the gallery will current “Doorstep,” a solo present by Jisoo Lee. Drawing from her personal expertise as a lady residing alone in Korea—the place many undertake camouflage ways like leaving males’s sneakers on the door to discourage gender-based crimes or keep away from societal stress—Lee explores the delicate boundaries of personal area which were breached by others.
Deal with: 30, Sinheung-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul
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Xlarge Gallery
Picture Credit score: Courtesy Xlarge Gallery Xlarge is each an exhibition area and a house, based in 2025 by Jae Seok Kim, a previous editor-in-chief of Artwork in Tradition and a former director of Gallery Hyundai, the place he as soon as mounted exhibitions for artists comparable to Lee Kun-Yong, Simon Fujiwara, and Ryan Gander.
The area grew out of Kim’s want to deliver artwork nearer to each day life and to carve out room for curatorial initiatives that champion LGBTQ+ artists, whose visibility stays restricted in Korea, the place debates round gender equality are fraught and same-sex marriage remains to be not acknowledged.
On view till October, the gallery’s present exhibition, solely the third since its founding, is a solo for Lee Dong-hyun, titled “Gap-Gap Hoo-ha.” Lee’s sculptures unravel the types of stuffed animals and Olympic mascots, recombining them into unusual hybrids. Put in throughout the home setting, these playful but unsettling creatures appear to stage a takeover of the home, filling it with each humor and unease.
