Asia’s frenetic art fair schedule kicked off with the fourth edition of Frieze Seoul (3-6 September), again running alongside the Korea International Art Fair (Kiaf), both at the Coex convention centre in Gangnam.
“No one was expecting fireworks,” said Riccardo Chesti, the associate director of Massimo di Carlo Hong Kong, speaking on day three of the fair. “And it has turned out much better than we had hoped.”
The past three years since Frieze launched in Seoul have brought changes to Korea’s scene as well as to the fair. The collector base is purportedly growing younger and more acclimated to a diversity of art, even as the fair attracts fewer Western exhibitors and more from Korea and around Asia. Despite a return to stability after last year’s military rule attempt, South Korea’s economy is expected to grow only 0.8% this year.
“As anywhere around the world, there are economic concerns, and the market has been slower,” said Frieze Seoul’s director Patrick Lee. “But good art is selling. Galleries are plugging away. They are showing great art. The museums are showing incredible art. I think the galleries are generally possibly taking a little more time, with less urgency. But the energy is here.”
“Critically it has been very, very good going meeting curators and directors of institutions and biennales,” said Benedicto Audi Jericho, the director of Kohesi Initiatives based in Yogjakarta, Indonesia. Joining the fair for the first time, his striking booth of Timoteus Anggawan Kusno’s hand-painted posters and props from a nonexistent film censored during Indonesia’s 1960s military rule period won the fair’s Stand Prize for the Focus Asia section. “Sales will require time, but we realised that beforehand, bringing this sort of presentation.”
“What’s interesting is the public days, and the interaction with the combination of fiction and fact,” that the project explores, Jericho said. “A lot of visitors ask about what is happening” in Indonesia, where massive nationwide protests are opposing government corruption. “Fairs are supposed to be a celebration, but what is happening back home makes that hard. So [the booth award] is a small win for us, that we can take back.”
Strong institutional presence
Lee said he was concerned there would be insufficient institutional presence, due to this being an off-year for Korea’s renowned Gwangju Biennale. But shows like Lee Bul at Leeum Museum, Adrián Villar Rojas at Art Sonje Center and the Mediacity Biennale at Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) have drawn curators. This year, 160 institutions from across the globe are present, including M+ artistic director and chief curator Doryun Chung, recent Hawaii Triennial co-curator Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Toledo Museum of Art Asian art curator Christine Starkman, New York Museum of Modern Art senior curator of architecture and design Paola Antonelli and San Francisco Asian Art Museum director and chief executive Soyoung Lee.
Opening day crowds were calm during the VIP morning but the halls were packed by mid-afternoon, included a dose of glamour from K-pop stars including BTS’s RM, V and J-Hope, Blackpink’s Lisa, Girls On Top’s Hyo and Seulgi, and Seventeen’s Vernon and The8. Actress and singer Anh So-hee and Korean supermodel KyungAh Song also attended, as did political figures like Korean first lady Kim Hea Kyung, Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon and the former US first daughter Malia Obama. Seoul Art Week, once again running concurrently to Seoul Fashion Week, included several crossover parties that brought celebrity buzz and tightened space at several of the bustling week’s art parties. This year’s Seoul art week also brought the first Design Miami.In Situ in Seoul (until September 14).
Asian collectors
At Frieze, collectors from Japan were more than half of those encountered by Kana Kawanishi, director of an eponymous Tokyo gallery, which joined the fair for the first time. “A lot of Japanese collectors are buying at Frieze Seoul because they want to say they bought it at Frieze,” and Japan has no equivalent level of fair. Of Frieze Seoul’s 121 galleries—about 50 of them newcomers—this year, 31 were from Korea and about 45 based in the rest of Asia, with nearly half of those from Japan.
Kana’s booth of Hideo Anze’s digital reworking of color fingerprints of famous art works had sold five works priced from $3,800 to $5,200 as of day three, including one to a Korean family. She describes the adult son bringing his parents and engaging in a long discussion, and admitting it was their first time collecting. “It has been good quality: we were expecting much worse, but it’s not that bad.”
Claudia Albertini, senior director of Massimo di Carlo Hong Kong, said Japanese collectors have increased compared to prior years, but are “still a minority” and about on par with collectors from China now, while Korean collectors remain the majority. “The choice of artworks is more mindful, perhaps less lighthearted, less spontaneous. Collectors buy when they are 100% sure that they love the work,” with attendance high throughout and buyers also hailing from Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
Along with Korean collectors like Lotte Group chair Shin Dong-bin and Byucksan CEO Higgim Kim, regional collectors like Hong Kong’s Sunpride Foundation founder Patrick Sun and Singapore megacollector Jackson See were spotted at the fair.
Those mainland Chinese collectors are mostly there to support Chinese galleries, said Robert Hsu, owner of Taipei’s PTT Space. He shrugged that the Taiwanese collectors in attendance were not so loyal to the handful of Taiwanese galleries participating, including TKG+ and Asia Art Center. Hsu describes a preponderance of art tourists, potential collectors in the region who welcomed the excuse to travel to trend-setting Seoul.
Showing the meme-subverting art of Christine Tien Wang, Hsu felt the concept was perhaps too complicated for the Korea market, and said the language barrier was a challenging even with a translator. “There just aren’t enough serious collectors here. The mega galleries do okay, which is true all the time for all the fairs,” but sales are tougher for smaller galleries. As of the third day, PTT had not sold any works, and the sole buyer had backed out. “I hear that happens at this fair a lot,” says Hsu.
Top-end sales
The larger galleries indeed fared better. Hauser & Wirth reported that Mark Bradford’s mixed media on canvas triptych Okay, then I apologize sold to a private Asian collection for USD 4.5 mln. Brandford’s show Keep Walking is currently running (through 25 January 2026) at Seoul’s Amorepacific Museum of Art. A George Condo work on paper commanded $1.2 mln. Works by Louise Bourgeois, currently showing at Seoul’s Hoam Museum of Art (until 4 January 2026), sold for $600,000 and $950,000. Two Lee Bul works went to Asian foundations for $300,000 and $400,000.
Korean giant Gallery Hyundai reported sales at Frieze of a work by Chung Sang-Hwa for around $600,000 and a work by John Pai for around $300,000. At Kiaf, it reported sales of a work by Kim Tschang-Yeul for around $150,000, two works by Kim Bohie for a total of around $150,000, and works by Lee Kang So, Park Minjoon, Kim Sung Yoon, Christine Sun Kim, and Seulgi Lee, with a total value of around $400,000.
Among the signs of long-term optimism in the Korea art market, Hyundai will next year launch a new Seoul fair called Hive next May. It joins a busy schedule of longtime local fair Art Busan and newcomers Loop Lab Busan and The Preview Seoul, all in May, Art Daegu in September plus new Seoul newcomer Art Ono in April.
Kukje, another local powerhouse, reported sales including two fabric works by Louis Bourgeois, currently showing at Seoul’s Hoam Museum of Art (until 4 January 2026), in the $100,000-120,000 range each, and a Jenny Holzer work in the $400,000480,000 range. Its New York sister gallery Tina Kim Gallery reported sales including three Ha Chong-Hyun paintings ranging from $230,000 to $390,000, a Kim Tschang Yeul painting for $350,000, two Mire Lee works for $25,000 and $40,000, and a Pacita Abad painting for $35,000.
Gladstone Gallery’s reported sales included a Salvo painting for $285,000, an Anicka Yi kelp sculpture for $60,000, several George Condo works on paper for $20,000 to $100,000 each, and multiple David Rappeneau works on paper for between $16,500 to $32,000 each. Pace Gallery reported that its sales included a Mary Corse shaped canvas for priced at $225,000, a Robert Indiana sculpture for $195,000, and three new sculptures by Kohei Nawa for $18,000.
At the higher end, White Cube reported the sale for €1.3m of Georg Baselitz’s 2014 painting Erstens, bitte schön, along with a Tracy Emin’s bronze for £220,000 and a Zhou Li mixed media on canvas for $55,000. Several works by Antony Gormley, showing in Korea at Museum SAN (until 30 November) and at White Cube and Thaddaeus Ropac’s Seoul locations, sold for a reported £250,000 to £ 450,000. "There was a great energy at Coex on day one of Frieze Seoul," says White Cube Seoul director Jini Yang. “This fourth edition of the fair has drawn many collectors, museum directors and curators from abroad, which added to the positive mood."
