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Art & Exhibitions

South Korea is bustling with major exhibitions, featuring Do Ho Suh at Art Sonje and Anicka Yi at the Leeum.

There are a wild number exhibitions on view at museums and other institutions in Seoul, and beyond, during Frieze. Selections from the collection of super-patron Francois Pinault are at the Songeun Art Space in Gangnam, Anicka Yi is unveiling a new show at the Leeum Museum of Art, and Nicolas Party is taking over its sister museum, the Hoam, an hour to the south, in Yongin. The Seoul Museum of Art? Its many branches are overflowing with art offerings, as are the two branches of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art within the city limits. The Horim, Arumjigi, Amorepacific, and plenty more outfits have big things going, too. Rent a bike! Get your Kakao T taxi app working! Or hire a driver! Who has time for art fairs when an exhibition calendar is this robust? Only joking, only joking. You can do it all. But in case you are pressed for time, a few choice selections follow below.

Hong Lee Hyun-sook, *In the Neighborhood of Seokgwangsa*, 2020. Photo courtesy the MMCA

“Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists”

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul
September 3 through March 3, 2025

Potential blockbuster alert! The MMCA’s Seoul branch in Samcheong-dong (near galleries like Kukje, PKM, and Hyundai) is mounting a blowout show of work by more than 50 female artists who have been active in Asia since the 1960s. The theme is “corporeality,” and the participants include the esteemed Filipino American polymath Pacita Abad (1946–2004), the unstoppable contemporary Korean sculptor Mire Lee, and the Japanese Gutai legend Atsuko Tanaka (1932–2005), famed for, among many other things, her 1956 dress made of electric lights. It is not the only major institutional show focused on women artists in Seoul right now: Through September 8, ARKO Art Center in the Hyewha neighborhood is hosting a show called “ZIP” with 16 Korean sculptors, including Rho Si-Eun and Kim Yun Shin, a star of the current Venice Biennale. We can argue about the value of ladies-only shows in 2024 (in Korea or elsewhere), but let’s first see what treasures are on view. —A.R.

Leonardo’s harpsichord-viola is a fascinating subject, as is the Impressionists’ fondness for the color purple. Art Bites offers intriguing facts, lesser-known stories, and curious historical events from the art world. These insights illuminate the lives of renowned artists and unravel their methods, adding intriguing dimensions to famous works of art.
Humans certainly rely on food and water, but the celebrated Surrealist Leonora Carrington believed we also need captivating stones and wind-borne feathers. Carrington envisioned “Surrealist survival kits” to aid anyone, artist or not, in navigating modern society. She discussed this idea with peers such as Penelope Rosemont, founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group in 1966 and author of Surrealist Women: An International Anthology in 1998. Rosemont recalled Carrington’s frequent mentions of these kits during their meetings in Chicago from 1989 to 1992.

Each kit comprises a collection of poetic, magical, talismanic objects, accompanied by images and other ‘Surrealist items,’ as Rosemont explained to Joanna Moorhead in Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington (2023). A kit might contain items like a feather, a pebble, a piece of glass, or verses from a poem, each as distinctive as the owner’s fingerprint, resonating with personal significance. Rosemont suggested that such unique collections could provide “a breath of magical fresh air” and help us endure challenging times.