Western Galleries Expand in Seoul as Korean Art Market Heats Up

Outposts of Western blue-chip galleries are popping up through Seoul as the Korean artwork marketplace, pushed by a new generation of collectors, proceeds to attract escalating focus. The Paris–based international gallery Perrotin has revealed options to set up a second outpost in the metropolis, joining the branch it founded there in 2016. The new gallery will occupy 2,700 square ft in Seoul’s posh Gangnam district and is slated to open up in September. Also growing in the metropolis is megagallery Rate, which before this month uncovered that it would include a new ground-flooring area to its 8,500-square-foot gallery in the city’s Hannam neighborhood, which it only just lately opened.

Sparking exhilaration in particular is the hotly predicted inaugural version of Frieze Seoul, getting put this September along with the extensive-running KIAF Seoul and its new spin-off, KIAF As well as. Speaking with Artnet Information, Alice Lung, a Seoul-based mostly associate at Perrotin, observed that “Seoul is absolutely the most vibrant and thrilling market place for now.” Lung cited world-wide interest to other Korean creative industries, these types of as motion pictures and K-pop, as propelling the current market. “The most significant improvements we see in excess of the yrs is the demographic of collectors and the amount of persons accumulating artwork,” she reported. “Before people ended up pretty centered on the dansaekhwa movement of artists but now, there is an explosion of younger rising artists from all aspects of existence in Korea, and the new customers are incredibly bullish about obtaining these new emerging talents.”

Perrotin will start its new department with a demonstrate of oil-on-linen paintings by the Los Angeles-based mostly artist Emma Webster on September 2, the day Frieze Seoul and equally KIAFs open. Other modern entrants to Korea’s funds metropolis include the New York–based Gladstone Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, König Galerie, Thaddeus Ropac, and Many Small Fires, whose presence signifies their operators’ belief in the sustained viability of the art market there.

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