On Solid Ground

PKM gallery, Seoul

PKM, one of the blue-chip galleries in the Sagadong neighborhood on Seoul's north side, shows the work of Sanggil Kim, whose photograph "Off-Line the Sound of Music International Community" (2005) is pictured here.

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A view of doArt Seoul

Damien Hirst Andy Warhol Ron Arad Roy Lichtenstein Keith Tyson Joan Miro Francis Bacon Marc Chagall

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Neither scandals nor the shadows of Beijing and Shanghai can knock Seoul from its position as Asia’s stealth art capital.

SEOUL—In sharp contrast with the now-famous boom in Beijing—where 300 galleries have sprung up overnight—Seoul’s art scene can be described as slow and steady. Standing in the quiet Jean Nouvel wing of the Leeum, Samsung Museum between an altered piano by Joseph Beuys and a pill-laden display case by Damien Hirst, one might wonder how the South Korean capital could be so often overlooked as a contemporary-art Mecca. The city doesn’t advertise itself as such, but it is probably the most westernized art scene in Asia, and it has matured without fanfare.

“Seoul’s is a tight, strong, small art scene but very solid, the opposite of what you find in China,” says Lynn Zelevansky, a contemporary-art curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who is working on an exhibition of contemporary Korean art slated to open in June 2009.

Seoul has built a solid gallery network over the past three decades, and local artists have gradually received recognition by museums and collectors worldwide. The city itself is simultaneously hyperactive and understated. It is in the midst of an explosion of new construction that has filled its center with glass-and-concrete skyscrapers, but business is still conducted with the grace and hospitality of a traditional Asian culture.  

Seoul, whose population exceeds 20 million when the surrounding suburbs are taken into account, has been entirely transformed since the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which began when Korea nearly defaulted on its international debt, eventually impelling the International Monetary Fund to step in with a $57 billion program to stabilize the region’s economies. The metropolis hugs both sides of the Han River, with its older districts and historic sites, such as the Gyeongbokgung Palace and the Dongdaemun Gate, located to the north and new high-rise developments and upscale shopping centers, all built in the past decade, to the south. It seems impenetrably vast and chaotic at first, but such landmarks as the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential palace, help orient visitors whizzing around in taxi cabs through the miles of office buildings, bathhouses, barbecue joints and karaoke bars.

Turn a corner in Insadong, an avenue that serves as Seoul’s primary tourist neighborhood, and suddenly you are in a town within a city, filled with gift shops selling embroidery, calligraphy brushes and souvenirs on a cobblestone street lined with pojangmacha, or outdoor food vendors, selling gimbap, rice cakes filled with meat and vegetables. If you’re searching for something more offbeat, a little digging will turn up the hipper side of Seoul—a one-night disco, say.  The artist Choi Jeong Hwa, known for his brightly colored inflatables and tchotchke-laden installations, organized such an event in the basement of C Space, a new experimental laboratory sponsored by a cosmetics company. Or if you want to get a taste of the type of art shown in Korea’s vibrant biennials—Kwangju and Busan both host biennials this month—Insa Art Space, an alternative venue sponsored by Arts Council Korea, recently partnered with New York’s New Museum on a show about the military base in Dongducheon, a small city near the dmz. This year, Insa turned its ground-floor gallery into a video lounge and coffee bar, a cool place to run into local artists as well as international curators.

For collectors wishing to explore the gallery scene in Seoul, there are two easy-to-navigate art districts: one on the city’s north side composed of the adjoining areas of Sagandong and Insadong, and the other to the south, comprising the neighborhood of Cheongdam-dong.  The two couldn’t be more different. Sagandong, which lies opposite the Gyeongbokgung Palace on the road to the Blue House, is filled with traditional Korean architecture of gray stone walls and tiled roofs, the streets lined with teahouses and fashion boutiques in addition to galleries. Here are found Seoul’s blue-chip dealers: Hyundai, PKM, Kukje and Arario; Gana, the other major international name, has its own compound in Pyeonchangdong, just a bit farther north.  In Sagandong, exhibitions of international talents like Joel Schapiro and Candida Höfer are as easy to find as are shows of such international Korean stars as Lee Bul and Cho Duck Hyun.