Jason Haam on the Driving Forces Behind Korea’s Growing Art Scene

In 2018, Jason Haam opened his eponymous gallery in Seoul. Having grown up in a collecting family, Haam was enamoured by the mechanisms of making, selling, consuming, and dealing art.

His ambitious programme and collaborations with fellow art dealers, notably David Kordansky and Sadie Coles, have placed his gallery at the forefront of the contemporary art scene in both Korea and abroad.

As his solo show with Urs Fischer enters its first weeks in Seoul, Haam shares his insights into the driving forces behind Korea's growing art scene.

I'm interested in your take on the explosion of activity happening in Seoul—did you foresee this happening?

It was not a surprise, as I knew that Frieze Seoul was going to have its inaugural edition this year—it was only natural to think that galleries were going to be interested in this country. When I started, Pace was already here, and Lehmann Maupin was just about to open. I know Esther Schipper was very active here also.

I'm grateful for everything that is happening—the wind is certainly blowing in our direction and I plan to take full advantage of that. Our show with Urs Fischer opened on 25 August, and he made a completely new body of work for us. I think it would have been a lot more difficult to host an artist of his calibre, and reputation, if this city had not had such momentum.

We will also have a beautiful 'Problem Painting' at Frieze.

A lot of the major galleries and auction houses were already doing a lot of business with Korean collectors, weren't they?

Yes—Christie's and Phillips have offices here, and I know Sotheby's will become more active here, led by my dear friend Jane Yoon.

Korea's two local auction houses, Seoul Auction and K Auction, have been operating thriving businesses here for years—Seoul Auction was founded in 1998, and K Auction in 2005. We also have two major homegrown galleries—Kukje Gallery and Gallery Hyundai, both of which I have a tremendous amount of respect for.

So, I believe the infrastructure was already in place, and there are a substantial number of collectors here also. Gradually, galleries have been coming in one by one, and interest has been building in global art suppliers. It has been a steady, interactive development on both sides of supply and demand, and I think this has been very healthy.

When I first met you, you were mainly dealing works by artists such as Yoshitomo Nara in the secondary market. What led you to open a gallery?

I come from a collecting family, and it was a fortunate accident that I happened to walk into a show by Yoshitomo Nara in 2013, when he had his very first solo exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York.

I went in and bought a work after speaking to a salesperson. Once we had the work at our home, my mom's friends and her friends' friends would come to our place and see it, and they would ask me if I could find similar works for them. All I had to do was to call his galleries.

So, I started buying these paintings for family friends, and the gallery would pay me something like 10,000 USD as a thank you. I was 23, so that was a lot of money for me then. And it quickly rolled into a business afterwards.

At the same time, I started asking myself, what makes an artwork go from $5,000 to $5 million? This led me to think about artists, and the mechanism of making, selling, consuming, and dealing art.

Meeting artists particularly got my juices going—I instantly connected with artists and fell in love with their creative spirits. I was spending most of my time and money buying and selling art and going to studios, so it was very natural decision for me to open a gallery.

The opportunity to work with artists I have tremendous respect for, and helping them to propagate their messages, is the most exciting thing I have ever done in my life. It is the best part of my job today.

That's interesting—so you were essentially working more in an advisory capacity to friends. Did you start doing that with David Kordansky as well? I remember you were really supportive of his programme.

I knew Dave relatively early on and had access to his programme. We now work with Anthony Pearson and Ricky Swallow from his programme. It has been fun working with Dave.

You collaborated with Sadie Coles HQ too, right? Did you pick up anything from them, in how they operate?

Yes. When you have a lot of respect for someone, it is hard not to learn things from them. For me, both Dave and Sadie are living legends, and I am excited to see how they work on their businesses. It feels like I am a new football player in town, and Dave and Sadie are Messi and Ronaldo. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but you get the gist.

I admire them both for their vision and awareness. I think great art dealers certainly represent a version of society, and in many ways, I believe, Sadie and Dave represent the best of theirs.

I feel a strong responsibility, and necessity, to learn about the great dealers of my generation, and in the previous ones. I want to be good at my job, and I want to learn what it means to be a great art dealer in different places and spectrums of time. Being an art dealer is interesting, and it is certainly very interesting to learn about them.

How does the market and what people are collecting affect your gallery and its programming?

My decision with the gallery's programme has little to do with the immediate response of the market. I try to have the wildest vision for my artists, and I think that is the most efficient way of making a lucrative business. But I acknowledge that being a part of the global art market is an important criterion for Korean collectors to see, in order to make a big investment.

Our market is new and still being developed, and people need reassurance that an artist's works are in demand in different parts of the world—like Lee Ufan, and Park Seo-Bo.

Could you tell me a little about the demographic of your collectors from Korea—what age are they generally, and what do they do?

The people who buy works made by Urs Fischer are very different from the people who buy works by Jonathan Gardner, Ricky Swallow, Daniel Sinsel, or Linn Meyers.

The demographic tends to correspond with the artists rather than the gallery, because essentially we advocate for what our artists make. At the same time, obviously I'm a young dealer, and I get enquiries from a lot of young collectors. In those cases I am happy to be a friend or an advisor, but I openly and unapologetically advocate for my artists.

Have you felt there's a new wave of young collectors in Korea, or is that just something I'm imagining?

Oh, I certainly believe there is a wave of new collectors in Korea. If I were to think about my own generation, we did not grow up seeing a whole lot of art. The world of contemporary art was always something beyond the horizon. We never visited contemporary art museums in school—I don't think there were contemporary art museums then. Certainly now, this has changed a lot.

The younger generation, they are savvier. And they are also global citizens. They travel, see exhibitions, and hear about things from different places—that is creating a whole new phenomenon.

It's not just people trying to make money. There is a generation of people who want to live and enjoy the whole of the art world. I want to see this prosper.—[O]