FRIEZE NEW YORK 2025

At Frieze New York, Kukje Gallery will introduce a selection of works by Korean artists, providing a comprehensive overview of modern and contemporary Korean art history. Featured in the booth is a ceramic work by the seminal Dansaekhwa artist Park Seo-Bo, Écriture No. 220613 (2022). The ceramic surface, imbued with pure hues of nature, conveys a subtle warmth and serene sensibility. Also on view is Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 24-41 (2024), a new work from his signature ‘Conjunction’ series. The piece offers a variation on Ha’s signature bae-ap-bub (back-pressure) technique—pushing paint from the reverse side of a coarse burlap canvas to the front—by painting a gradient that fades from top to bottom across the canvas. A pioneering figure who laid the foundation of the Korean avant-garde movement, Ha is currently presenting Ha Chong-Hyun, a solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery in Seoul. Also displayed are two works by first-generation Korean woman sculptor Kim Yun Shin, a painting Waves of Joy 2025-8 (2025) and a sculpture Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 2013-12 (2013). The works embody her unique artistic philosophy of perceiving nature not as a subject of contemplation, but as a subject that ‘add[s to become] one’ with the artist, conveying a sense of primal energy and vitality.

Conceptual artist Kim Yong-Ik, also known as the ‘polka-dot painter,’ employs the repeated use of a quintessential motif of modernist geometry, the circle, to create a visual rhythm in his painting Untitled (1990). At the same time, the traces of nature and time left on the surface subtly disrupt the formal purity of modernist principles. Koo Bohnchang, a pioneer of Korean photography who has been reinterpreting traditional Korean aesthetics through a contemporary lens, presents Vessel (OSK 06-1 BW) (2005). Koo has recently been awarded the 2025 Samsung Ho-Am Prize for the Arts this April and is currently participating in Mega Seoul 8 Decades, a group exhibition organized by the Korean Cultural Center in Vienna, Austria, and Museum Hanmi in Seoul. Jae-Eun Choi persents When We First Met (2024). Choi, living and working in Kyoto, framed and inscribed the names of different wildflowers she had encountered upon her strolls near her studio. By calling each flower by its name, the artist calls attention to the beauty of the mundane and of nature, as well as existential ideas of the order of the universe. Choi is currently presenting Nature Rules, a solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery in Seoul. Hong Seung-Hye’s Frame Type Relief (2024) is also on view at the booth. Expanding the basic unit of the digital screen—the square pixel—into motifs of stars, circles, and flowers using vector graphics software, the piece explores the relationship between the internal structure of the artwork and the architectural space it inhabits, unfolding a physical site of geometric abstraction within the booth.

Kyungah Ham’s embroidery work Sorrow Series 032408 (2024), produced in collaboration with Magnolia Editions, is a tapestry that evokes the global despair and sorrow experienced during the pandemic. Its blurred textures embody the emotional weight through the unique tactile quality of the medium. A new paper work by Haegue Yang, Dawn Gymnastics Soul Relief – Mesmerizing Mesh #272 (2025), draws on traditional paper-cutting and ritual objects found across different cultures. Exploring the symbolic properties of paper—healing, purification, and hope—the artist investigates the relationship between material and spiritual. Yang is currently participating in the traveling exhibition Leap Year at Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands through August 31, and the group exhibition Reimagining Radical Cities at New Taipei City Art Museum in Taiwan through September 7. Suki Seokyeong Kang’s Mora 55 × 40—Bold #15 (2020–2023), a work inspired by the linguistic concept of ‘mora,’ draws on the minimal unit of sound duration. Horizontally laid canvas and layers of gouache create an abstract surface that accumulates temporality and narrative through the physical nature of paint. Kang recently held her largest North American solo exhibition, Mountain—Hour—Face, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Following the recent passing of the artist, the gallery is honored to commemorate her artistic legacy and to bring together those who were deeply moved by her singular vision.

The booth also introduces works by Korean American artists. Byron Kim’s Cosmos Pathos (2016), from his ‘Bruise’ series, translates the physical mark of a bruise into pure color, abstracting its symbolic resonance into painterly form. Michael Joo’s Relinquished (91935.63 calories) (2017) explores the poetic potential of silver’s reflective surface, while the title, which references the calories contained in consuming an entire human body, from skin and nails to internal organs, draws attention to unseen bodily functions and existential questions of being.

In the meantime, Kukje Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition of Ha Chong-Hyun, Ha Chong-Hyun, at its Seoul K1 and Hanok spaces through 11 May. Under the theme ‘What is painting?’ the exhibition surveys the artist’s sustained experimentation with oil paint and materiality over five decades. Simultaneously, the Seoul K2 and K3 spaces are holding Nature Rules, a solo exhibition by Jae-Eun Choi, which lays the groundwork for ecological restoration in the DMZ and calls for the return of nature’s sovereignty. The exhibition presents works of diverse media, exploring themes revolving around the origin of life, temporality, birth and extinction, as well as the complex dynamic between nature and humanity. At Kukje Gallery Busan, Yeondoo Jung’s solo exhibition The Inevitable, Inacceptable runs through 20 July. Blending the rhythms of blues music and fermentation, the artist offers a unique perspective on humor, hope, and navigating life’s uncontrollable realities.