6 Attention-grabbing Artworks at Frieze Seoul 2023

There are more than 120 galleries at Frieze Seoul this year. Together they're presenting hundreds and hundreds of artworks. These six stood out in surprising ways.

Pierre Huyghe, Role Announcer (2016) at Esther Schipper

Pierre Huyghe's Role Announcer is ingeniously attuned to the desires and anxieties of art fair attendees. A maitre d' in a black suit and a bowtie is stationed beside a doorway-sized entrance into Esther Schipper's booth. (Here the work is paired with Philippe Parreno's light installation Marquee (2023), adding an extra glint of glamour.) The maitre d' asks for your full name before allowing you past. As you enter the booth, she bellows your name by way of introduction, offering a moment of celebrity that withers into mortification as absolutely no-one applauds or embraces you.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, 'untitled 2020 (embossed nature morte)' series (2023) at STPI

Rirkrit Tiravanija is well represented at Seoul this year, featuring in several booths and at Shinsegae Gallery in a co-presentation with Galerie Chantal Crousel, Gladstone Gallery, kurimanzutto, and Pilar Corrias. The most dramatic presentation of his work is this memorial to 20 extinct species at STPI—Creative Workshop & Gallery. The use of chrome foil on embossed paper was in part inspired by a 2017 episode of Spongebob Squarepants entitled 'Everything is Chrome in the Future'. The work draws attention to the future denied these species, and warns of more extinctions to come.

Xiyadie, Flowerpot (1991) at P21

Seoul gallery P21 has an exceptional booth, including vehemently representational macro paintings of candle flames by Keem Jiyoung and Hyungkoo Lee's physical face filters—helmets equipped with lenses to exaggerate facial features—big eyes, plump lips. Most wonderfully discombobulating is Xiyadie's traditional folk-style papercuts depicting gay sex. Flowerpot was created way back in 1991, when same sex relations were still a crime in China and homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder, and consequently kept a secret by the artist.

Issy Wood, A lot of missionary (2023) at Carlos Ishikawa

The success of Issy Wood's Korean debut, I like to watch (7 September–12 November 2023) at the Ilmin Museum of Art, helped draw the crowds to Carlos Ishikawa's booth. Showcasing two paintings, one on linen, one on velvet, they were shining examples of the disarming immediacy with which she paints. While normally drawn to the brilliance of her signature jacket paintings on velvet, the detail of A lot of missionary (2023) was particularly impressive. (A second fix of Issy Wood could be found at Michael Werner, a smaller work capturing various bundles of asparagus floating around the frame.)

Walter Price, Selected Works at The Modern Institute

The Modern Institute stood out with a solo booth exhibiting a group of small Walter Price paintings immaculately installed. Price's paintings occasionally contain recurring motifs or figurative references, but these were more abstract, giving nothing away to the viewer but Price's 'style-defying style', in the words of the late great New Yorker critic, Peter Schjeldahl. The works will stay together after being acquired by a foundation. With strong institutional support—Price has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and more recently at Camden Art Centre—it's refreshing to see a less obviously commercial painter showcased in Asia.

Joseph Yaeger, Everything broken shines (2023) at Project Native Informant

Talented painter Joseph Yaeger is showcasing three small paintings and one very large one at Project Native Informant. Admiring their features—the bulging gesso, the swathes of watercolour, the discerning subject matter—you begin to envy the home in which they'll soon be hung (all were marked as reserved before the fair opened). In Everything broken shines (2023), it's the angle captured by his framing that is so memorable. Two women embrace under what appears to be a green neon light strip, a moment that presents more questions than it answers. —[O]