Frieze Seoul 2025 reaffirmed the city’s position as one of the world’s most dynamic cultural capitals. At the heart of the week was the Frieze Art Fair, where leading international galleries shared space with a strong contingent of Korean and Asian exhibitors. The presentations balanced blue-chip names with younger practices, offering collectors and curators a panoramic view of contemporary art’s current directions.
Anchored by the fair at COEX, the week unfolded across museums, foundations, design halls, and unexpected urban sites, creating a constellation of exhibitions and events that blended global dialogue with local resonance. Here are some of our picks of the best of the week.
Lee Bul at Leeum Museum of Art
Lee Bul at “From 1998 to Now,” 2025. Photo by Yoon Hyung Moon. Courtesy of Leeum Museum of Art.
Lee Bul, Installation Shot of “From 1998 to Now.” Courtesy of the artist and Leeum Museum of Art.
Among the institutional highlights, Lee Bul’s exhibition, “From 1998 to Now” at the Leeum Museum of Art commanded attention. Known for her futuristic sculptures and immersive installations, Lee Bul presented new and historic works that probed the intersections of technology, utopia, and the human condition. The exhibition assembles roughly 150 works, tracing key developments in Lee Bul’s practice from the late 1990s to today. Featured are seminal pieces from her “Cyborg” and “Anagram” series, alongside an interactive karaoke installation—works that first captured international attention in major biennales and museum shows and established her as a leading voice in contemporary art.
Kimsooja at SUNHYEWON
Kimsooja, Installation Shot of “To Breathe—Sunhyewon, 2025.” Courtesy of PODO Museum.
Situated in Samcheong-dong, the historic Sunhyewon estate has been reopened by SK Group as a research institute and cultural site, with PODO Museum introducing its first Sunhyewon Art Project. The inaugural edition features Kimsooja, whose installation “To Breathe—Sunhyewon, 2025” transforms the traditional hanok building Kyongheunggak into an immersive environment. By covering the floor with mirrors, the work reflects architecture, light, and viewers themselves, dissolving boundaries between structure and presence. It is the first time Kimsooja’s “To Breathe” series has been realized within a hanok, creating a rare dialogue between Korean architectural heritage and her meditative contemporary practice.
Park Seo-Bo × LG OLED
Park Seo-Bo, Colors Drawn From Nature. Courtesy of LG Oled
LG OLED and the Park Seo-Bo Foundation unveiled “Colors Drawn from Nature,” the first exhibition of the late Dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) pioneer’s work since the close of a three-year mourning period. Original Écriture paintings were shown alongside hue drenched OLED interpretations, with transparent displays deliberately placed before canvases to echo the glass that both protects and mediates traditional works—allowing viewers a rare 360-degree view of image and provenance. At the center, a T-shaped installation by Je Baak digitally reimagined Park’s transformative encounter with autumn leaves, using AI to gather reds from images worldwide into a collective monument of shared vision.
Mark Bradford at Pacific Amore
Mark Bradford, “Keep Walking.” Courtesy of the artist.
Mark Bradford’s “Keep Walking,” his first solo exhibition in South Korea and the largest presentation of his work in Asia, brought together nearly forty pieces spanning two decades of practice. Known for transforming materials sourced from urban life—billboard paper, endpapers, and street flyers—into layered and tactile abstractions, Bradford reflects on memory, community, and social histories through his process of tearing, sanding, and collaging. The exhibition included large-scale paintings, video works, and site-specific commissions, with highlights such as Float (2019), a monumental floor installation inviting viewers to move across its surface. Bradford’s presence in Seoul underscored the exhibition’s emphasis on cross-cultural dialogue and the politics of material. Guests at the private preview were treated to a curatorial walkthrough in the presence of Mark Bradford and famed designer, Peter Marino.
Frieze House Seoul
Installation Shot of “UnHouse.” Photo by Sunghoon Park. Courtesy of Frieze House Seoul
Frieze House Seoul opens with its inaugural exhibition “UnHouse,” curated by writer, curator, and gallerist Jae Seok Kim. Bringing together Korean and international artists, the exhibition challenged conventional ideas of domestic space by reframing the notion of home through a queer perspective. Alongside its curatorial debut, the building itself is set to take on a long-term role as Frieze’s new offices in Seoul, under the leadership of the newly appointed Director of Frieze House Seoul.
Miranda Forrester at FOUNDRY SEOUL
Miranda Forrester, Installation Shot of “Be Like Water.” Courtesy of artist and FOUNDRY SEOUL.
FOUNDRY SEOUL presents “Be Like Water,” the first solo exhibition in Seoul by London-based artist Miranda Forrester. Her new works trace moments of everyday intimacy through fluid lines and quiet observation, evoking the serenity of life beyond fixed social binaries. Water appears as both subject and metaphor, a space of intimacy and transition that gestures toward freedom, fluidity, and transformation while celebrating the joy of community and belonging.
Other notable presentations include “Intimate Form: A Collection of Small-Scale Sculpture” by Henry Moore, a series of maquette-style works crafted by the artist, realized through diverse materials and distinctive surface treatment presented by Sotheby’s. Design Miami. In Situ at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, presented “Illuminated: A Spotlight on Korean Design,” curated by Hyeyoung Cho. Also, at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Tom Sachs led a private walkthrough of “Space Program: Infinity.” Known for his bricolage approach to material and his obsession with space exploration, Sachs invited guests into a narrative that blurred sculpture, performance, and engineering. Thaddaeus Ropac and White Cube collaborate on “Inextricable,” Antony Gormley‘s first solo exhibition in the city. The two-part exhibition explores the relationship between the human body and the urban environment.
Some of the week’s most memorable celebrations unfolded all over the city often overlapping and adding to the traffic in the sprawling city. The K11 Art Foundation’s Moon Party at the Grand Hyatt Seoul reimagined the Chuseok tradition with bold art installations, tequila cocktails, and a glowing moon centerpiece, while Huang Yulong and Faker’s collaborative work HUSH1 transformed the garden into a radiant stage. Frieze Music Seoul at The Shilla expanded the program into performance, with Crush and Baby DONT Cry electrifying the crowd. At the Futura Seoul Party, hosted with Soho House, guests enjoyed cocktails from Alice Cheongdam, one of Asia’s 50 Best Bars while experiencing Anthony McCall’s immersive light installation. Meanwhile, LACMA x Make Room x APALAZZOGALLERY brought together collectors and K-pop stars for a fried chicken feast at Kyochon Pilbang in support of LACMA’s Asian and Asian Diaspora Initiative. Adding to the week’s cultural weight, Gagosian honored Takashi Murakami with a dinner celebrating his new exhibition at the APMA Cabinet, which explored the artist’s deep ties between Japan and Korea.
Frieze Seoul 2025 was not confined to COEX or to any single institution. From Lee Bul at the Leeum Museum to Kimsooja in Samcheong, to Henry Moore in Lotte World Tower to Tom Sachs at DDP, the week underscored how seamlessly art can inhabit Seoul’s many contexts. It was, ultimately, a citywide statement—one that blended Korean modernism with global contemporary practices, traditional spaces with futuristic collaborations, and formal exhibitions with unforgettable nights across the city.
