Frieze Seoul 2023: Advisory Selections

Catherine Goodman's Loic in the Mountains (2023) at Hauser & Wirth

A Royal Academy Schools graduate, Catherine Goodman's oeuvre is concerned with the different ways bodily configurations can fragment or unify the space that surrounds us.

Bursting with vigorous brushwork and bold colours, Loic in the Mountains (2023) is a superb example of Goodman's visceral painting style. The London and Somerset-based artist brings together energetic strokes in deep red and brown that collide in a hovering mass of abstract form.

While the centre of the painting showcases chaotic, thick layers of paint, the edges are less busy, teasing snippets of a blue sky filled with clouds. Goodman regularly practises observational drawing, preparing her large-scale paintings with sketches from daily life.

Goodman's presentation at Frieze Seoul coincides with her major exhibition, Do you remember me..., at Waddesdon Manor in Aylesbury, on view until 29 October 2023.

Lucia Laguna's Azulejo N^o1 (2023) at Sadie Coles HQ

Interested in juxtaposing the natural world and urban spaces, Lucia Laguna keenly observes the surroundings of her home and studio in Rio de Janeiro.

Azulejo N^o1 (2023) belongs to her series 'Azulejo' (Tiles) which explores fragmented domestic interiors. In this painting, Laguna depicts outlines of monstera leaves flatly filled with blood orange paint. She brings the outside world inside, introducing exotic foliage to a domestic space.

The painting is separated into tile-like segments. We see thin straight lines cut through portions of windows, shelves, and empty spaces, fragmenting the image in a way that alters our perspective. Laguna's geometric style disorientates our sense of scale by enlarging details such as the encroaching monstera leaves.

Salvo's Una sera (2001) at Mazzoleni

Mazzoleni is showing a dream-like landscape by Italian conceptual artist Salvo. Taking simplified forms and soft hues, Una sera (2001) beautifully captures the stillness of dusk falling over an alpine landscape.

Salvo builds up layers of oil paint in pastel pink, purple, and forest green to render an enchanting vision of nature surrounding a lone house. Smoke billows from its chimney, suggesting onlookers are not alone as they watch the sunset.

Salvo's masterful rendering of natural light in a mystical style is intriguing. He transforms a typical Italian landscape into a whimsy-coloured dreamworld, painting in a style that is reminiscent of avant-garde predecessors such as Giorgio de Chirico.

Rirkrit Tiravanija and Rafael Domenech's Meditating in the eye of the storm 2 and 3 (2023) at Galerie Chantal Crousel

Known for his participatory practice, Rirkrit Tiravanija often transforms galleries and museums into social environments. For Frieze Seoul, the Buenos Aires-born artist has collaborated with interdisciplinary artist Rafael Domenech to bring a vibrant duo of hanging light shades to Seoul.

Made from printed paper, the shades read 'il était une fois' (once upon a time) and 'run like hell' on a background of digitally manipulated scraps of colourful, misshapen forms.

The artists give the artwork use value by creating a household item that brings people together in communal environments. By doing so, Tiravanija and Domenech encourage us to see their work as an opportunity for engagement rather than a tangible item.

Adrián Villar Rojas' Untitled 22 (2023) at kurimanzutto

Adrián Villar Rojas is interested in the interplay between inorganic and organic materials.

For his presentation at Frieze Seoul, he brings a number of sculptures influenced by his series 'Brick Farm' (2012), which was inspired by the Argentinian hornero bird—a bird that forms its nests from straw, mud, and rubble to suit the human-built environments it increasingly finds itself in.

Shifting from organic to artificial forms, Untitled 22 (2023) is made up of complexly textured synthetic materials overlapping each other. This experimental sculpture was weathered and worn by a virtual world Villar Rojas created, which stimulated violent conditions of fire, war, and gravity.

As a result of the artist's generated interactions, the sculpture exists as something entirely alien. Hive-like surfaces weave between stalagmites and bulbous blue forms on top of what looks like the carcass of a crustacean creature. The artist's sculpture comments on the destruction and decay that ravages the contemporary world.

Joseph Yaeger's Pain of discipline, pain of remorse (2023) at Project Native Informant

Joseph Yaeger's close-up fragments of time intrigue gallery-goers by imbuing a strange sense of nostalgia.

Project Native Informant brings Yaeger's realist works to Seoul for an exciting presentation of contemporary painting. Displayed alongside paintings by Anna Jung Seo and Kenneth Bergfeld, Yaeger's compositions deliver snippets of the ordinary permeated by an uncanny atmosphere.

Pain of discipline, pain of remorse (2023) depicts a closely cropped shot of a figure taking off their sock. Yaeger paints an immediately recognisable scene while keeping us curious. His subject's face is absent and the background is void of anything that can suggest a specific time or place—there is nothing traceable within the frame.

It's not just his subject matter that feels mysterious. Yaeger's laborious technique of layering thick acrylic gesso with quick washes of watercolour gives his paintings a hazy, dream-like quality.

Jonas Wood's Bonsai #5 (2023) at Karma

Los Angeles-based artist Jonas Wood is known for his bright and colourful paintings of still life, architecture, and landscape. Using photography and collage, his work delivers a variety of perspectives that appear at once flat and dimensional.

Bonsai #5 (2023) is a charming painting of a bonsai orange tree leaning to one side. The leaves are painted in a flat green tone that gives the impression they are cut-outs, overlaid on top of the tree's speckled branches like a collage.

Wood's quasi-abstract cut-out style harks back to the flattened style of Henri Matisse. His collage-based approach to painting embraces the joy one can find in seemingly mundane objects from contemporary life.

Rosemarie Trockel's Remake (2014) at Sprüth Magers

Mimicking the way oil paintings on canvas are displayed, Rosemarie Trockel's Remake (2014) is made from vibrantly coloured knitted wool stretched across a frame. The work features a lurid pink, red and blue palette and an abstract composition of horizontal lines.

To create her wool works, Trockel uses a computerised knitting machine to map out vertical and horizontal stripes in a variety of chequered patterns. The German-born artist's knitted paintings address questions surrounding gender associations and the value of craftsmanship in an increasingly mechanised world.

Wendy Park's Dried Anchovies (2023) at Various Small Fires

Korean-American artist Wendy Park paints colourful snapshots from everyday life that convey the importance of memory.

Her painting, Dried Anchovies (2023), introduces everyday objects familiar to the artist from her upbringing. Park, who grew up the daughter of Korean immigrants, paints a scene from her dining table. A tablecloth-covered surface serves as the background for a plate of fish, bottles of soju, and an ashtray with the ends of cigarettes.

Park's painting of ordinary objects draws attention to the intimate narratives of her childhood. The still-life scene commemorates moments she shared with her family, and reminds us of the importance of telling one's own story.

Various Small Fires presents several paintings by Park alongside work by artists Nikki S. Lee, Kyungmi Shin, Lumin Wakoa, and Mark Yang.

Yun Hyong-keun's Umber-Blue (1975) at Axel Vervoordt Gallery

Yun Hyong-keun's abstract oil painting, Umber-Blue (1975), explores the South Korean artist's lifelong fascination with nature.

One of the most important figures in the Dansaekhwa art movement, Yun Hyong-keun is known for making work that takes influence from traditional Korean ideals as well as characteristics of modern Western abstraction.

For Umber-Blue, Yun Hyong-keun blends a palette of umber (a natural earth pigment) and blue (a colour typically associated with water), to envision a monochromatic, abstract form.

An expanse of black sweeps across Yun Hyong-keun's canvas to unveil a vertical pillar formed of earthy, bright tones. The way the oil paint seeps into the hempen cloth renders blurred edges between forms, establishing lighter segments that offer an instance of relief from the severe darkness consuming the canvas. —[O]