White Cube is the latest Western gallery to open in Seoul amid the city’s ongoing art market boom. The global dealership, which has spaces in London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong, will open in upmarket Gangnam-gu this fall; the exact opening date has not yet been revealed.
The ground-floor gallery, facing the street, will measure 300 square meters and be housed in the same building as the private art museum Horim Art Center, which houses a collection of Korean modern art and antiques.
“The Korean art scene is characterized by deep connections to the local and the global. This is perfectly displayed in our new White Cube location, which is close to the bustling and bustling Gangnam district, next to Dosan Park, and shares a building with the Horim Art Center, whose collection of Korean artifacts and art I have personally admired for many years,” says Jini Yang, the director of White Cube Seoul. Yang has been the gallery’s Korean representative since 2018. , a title she retains.Before joining White Cube, Yang served for nine years as chief curator of Gallery Ihn, a now closed Seoul commercial gallery that participated in Art Basel in Hong Kong.
White Cube currently only has one Korean artist on its roster, albeit a heavyweight: Park Seo Bo, one of the country’s most famous and successful artists best known for his minimal abstract paintings associated with the Dansaekhwa movement of the 1960s. Earlier this year, the Gwangju Biennale, Korea’s most prestigious art exhibition, halted a $100,000 prize named and funded by Park following complaints that the aesthetic style and political positions of the artist were at odds with the spirit of the Gwangju Biennale.
White Cube has also previously shown two other Korean artists, Minjung Kim and Seung-taek Lee, according to a gallery spokesperson.
Since the first Frieze Seoul, which took place in September 2022, a number of Western galleries have opened a first or second space in the city, including, most recently, Fathers Projects.
Meanwhile, Thaddaeus Ropac announced today that he is doubling his footprint in Seoul by expanding his current gallery in Hannam-dong. The gallery will open its extension in time for Frieze Seoul 2023 (September 6-9), with separate exhibitions of drawings by Joseph Beuys and three-dimensional works by Donald Judd.
Esther Schipper opened her gallery in Seoul last year
Photo © Andrea Rossetti
But sustained international dealer interest in Seoul contradicts a gloomier assessment of South Korea’s economy, which contracted 0.4% in the final quarter of 2022, the first time it has fallen since 2020. he OECD expects South Korea’s economy to grow by 1.6% in 2023, a significant decline from 2022, when it grew by 2.6%, and from its growth of 4, 1% recorded in 2021. Rising private consumption continues to be a major driver of growth in South Korea, spurred in part by the Bank of Korea’s suspension of interest rate hikes in January.
Meanwhile, other prominent Western dealers are also taking advantage of Frieze Seoul’s preparation to make inroads with Korean collectors, as well as using their platforms to boost the presence of Korean art overseas. . This is the case of the Esther Schipper gallery, which is organizing a collective exhibition of eight Korean artists next month in its spaces in Berlin and Seoul, the latter having opened last year in the Geyonglidan street district.
“For me, it’s not a one-way street: yes, I want to bring the work of European artists to Seoul, but I would also very much like to contribute to increased visibility of Korean artists in Western Europe and at art fairs. Europeans,” says gallery founder Esther Schipper. “The exhibition Dui Jip Ki will do just that: artists from five generations will be exhibited in Seoul and Berlin, some for the first time in Germany.”
Schipper adds that she has been traveling and developing relationships in South Korea for ten years. According to a Schipper spokesperson, the gallery has a team of about four hired consultants and managers who specialize in the Korean art market.
