Frieze Seoul Has Two Brand-New Curated Sections for 2026
“Material Practice” and ”Spotlight” eye the contemporary and the overlooked
Visitors to the September 2–5 Frieze Seoul programming on Level 3 of Gangnam’s COEX will discover two sections making their debut. “Material Practice” is dedicated to collectible design and contemporary art and craft, with a focus on modern things done with familiar materials like ceramics, wood, glass, metal, hanji, textiles, and paper. Then there is “Spotlight,” which is oriented to art history without looking backward: it is dedicated to giving 15 comparatively overlooked 20th-century artists a fresh and deserved reappraisal.
At “Material Practice,” the Arumjigi Culture Keepers Foundation is creating an installation inspired by the architecture and lifestyle of the Korean hanok, with a sarangbang made using hanji, plus an adjoining space of hospitality featuring ceramics by Kwon Dae-sup, Lee Hun-chung, and Inchin Lee, along with bamboo work by Cho Dae-yong. Soluna Fine Art, meanwhile, brings together eight artists including Dahye Jeong, the winner of the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize in 2022, and Jongjin Park, who received the prize this year. Artists in “Spotlight” include photographer Han Youngsoo, whose photographs captured postwar Seoul, Myanmar conceptual artist Po Po, represented in part by previously unexhibited works made under political isolation and censorship, and Suk Ran Hi, whose six decades of abstraction offer a broad view of postwar Korean art.
The curators behind the two sections bring different specialties to Frieze Seoul. Hyeyoung Cho, who will be overseeing “Material Practice,” began her career as a ceramic artist and has spent decades working with Korean applied arts. Wonseok Koh, who is managing “Spotlight,” is director of the Line Cultural Foundation and previously served as chief curator at the Seoul Museum of Art. While Cho is grounded in material traditions apt for a section concerned with craft and design, Koh brings the institutional and art-historical background suited to reconsidering artists who have slipped outside twentieth-century Western narratives.