Five Under-the-Radar Galleries to Watch in Seoul

A nonprofit named Eulji Artwork Heart till 2022, PS Heart was not too long ago reimagined by director Park Jiinn after years of watching artists abandon their practices—and after starting her personal path as a collector. Along with three companions, most of whom come from nonprofit backgrounds, she now runs PS Heart with an emphasis on nurturing real relationships: guiding new collectors firstly of their journey, whereas working intently with artists to form every exhibition.

Housed on the highest flooring of a former metallic manufacturing facility in Euljiro, the gallery’s arched ceiling hints at its previous life. Surrounded by 9 different galleries and nonprofits inside strolling distance, it has grow to be a pure cease on Seoul’s gallery-hopping circuit. Current packages embrace a solo exhibition by New York–based mostly Korean painter Park Yoo-ah, recognized for her portrait collection of Korean adoptees.

Throughout Frieze Seoul, the gallery will current a brand new physique of labor by Indian artist Naresh Kumar, created throughout his residency in Gwangju—a metropolis nonetheless scarred by the 1980 bloodbath, when the navy killed many pro-democracy demonstrators. Kumar’s works discover the persistence of collective motion, and the struggles that proceed to echo throughout borders and generations. Titled “March to March,” the exhibition runs August 26 to September 13.

Deal with: 3F, 18, Changgyeonggung-ro 5da-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul

Quick for What We Want Now, WWNN was based in 2023 by artist Jungwoo Lee and curator Juhyun Oh. With a concentrate on displaying set up artwork, interactive works, and site-specific initiatives, the gallery’s program revolves round a central query: what it means to be human as we speak.

Lee and Oh consider that understanding the current requires voices that minimize throughout generations, and so they usually mount exhibitions during which rising artists are positioned in dialogue with mid-career artists. This method may be seen in a 2024 group exhibition, titled “Fairy Tales,” during which painter Luc Tuymans confirmed alongside artists many years his junior.

Throughout Frieze Seoul, the gallery will collaborate with Japanese gallery CON, following a joint undertaking finally yr’s Artwork Collaboration Kyoto. From September 4–27, CON will take over WWNN’s area to stage a gaggle present of 4 artists from Japan and Sweden. Mixing hybrid sculpture and sound installations with portray and reconfigured city objects, the exhibition, titled “Fantasy within the Sudden,” will probe fragile connections between materials, reminiscence, and fantasy.

Deal with: 20, Samcheong-ro 5-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul

With a background in exhibition design and manufacturing, artist Gwansoo Shin based Bathe Gallery in 2023 as an area to check bold and radical types of artwork. For Shin, the gallery is much less about displaying objects than about staging significant encounters.

That ethos got here into focus with “SUCCESSION 0.1,” an exhibition during which artist Hyein Min remodeled the area right into a labyrinth of momentary picket partitions for pictures, video, and sculpture. When the present ended, Canadian artist Simon Shim-Sutcliffe repurposed the constructions into an extended bridge-like desk. Over the course of per week, the gallery grew to become a website of course of and play, the place guests shared dinners and, on the ultimate night time, a celebration.

Bathe’s present exhibition, on view till September 14, will characteristic Shanghai-based artist Chen Ruofan, presenting a large-scale set up that transforms manufacturing facility sawdust into each a visceral atmosphere that appears on the hidden toll of labor and environmental neglect.

Deal with: GF, 61, Duteopbawi-ro Yonsan-gu, Seoul

After working at blue-chip galleries together with Thaddaeus Ropac and Kukje Gallery, Hyejin Jee based Sangheeut, the one gallery in Haebangchon, in 2021. Jee envisions the gallery as a platform for tales of her technology, giving artists room to experiment with codecs that really feel much less tied to business strain. Sangheeut has launched rising voices comparable to Tokyo-based American artist Michael Rikio Ming Hee Ho, Indonesian multidisciplinary artist Maruto Ardi, and Korean sculptor Eugene Jung.

From August 28 to September 27, the gallery will current “Doorstep,” a solo present by Jisoo Lee. Drawing from her personal expertise as a girl residing alone in Korea—the place many undertake camouflage techniques like leaving males’s sneakers on the door to discourage gender-based crimes or keep away from societal strain—Lee explores the delicate boundaries of personal area which have been breached by others.

Deal with: 30, Sinheung-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

Xlarge is each an exhibition area and a house, based in 2025 by Jae Seok Kim, a previous editor-in-chief of Artwork in Tradition and a former director of Gallery Hyundai, the place he as soon as mounted exhibitions for artists comparable to Lee Kun-Yong, Simon Fujiwara, and Ryan Gander.

The area grew out of Kim’s want to convey artwork nearer to day by day life and to carve out room for curatorial initiatives that champion LGBTQ+ artists, whose visibility stays restricted in Korea, the place debates round gender equality are fraught and same-sex marriage remains to be not acknowledged.

On view till October, the gallery’s present exhibition, solely the third since its founding, is a solo for Lee Dong-hyun, titled “Gap-Gap Hoo-ha.” Lee’s sculptures unravel the types of stuffed animals and Olympic mascots, recombining them into unusual hybrids. Put in inside the home setting, these playful but unsettling creatures appear to stage a takeover of the home, filling it with each humor and unease.