Frieze Seoul

Past
Sep 6 – Sep 9, 2023
Seoul

Art Fair Details:

Frieze Seoul
Booth A10
COEX
Sep 6 – 9, 2023

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Above: Lawrence Weiner, ON THE LINE OFF THE LINE, 1997/2023. Language + the materials referred to. Dimensions variable © Lawrence Weiner Estate

Pace is pleased to announce its booth highlights for the 2023 edition of Frieze Seoul, where the gallery will make its debut presentation of work by the late artist Lawrence Weiner.

Now representing Weiner’s estate in Asia, Pace will spotlight his ON THE LINE OFF THE LINE (1997) on its booth at the fair, and the artist’s PEELED PAST THE CORE (2016) will be on public view at its gallery in Seoul beginning September 5.

Concurrent with Frieze Seoul, a major survey dedicated to Weiner will be on view at the city’s Amorepacific Museum of Art. In spring 2024, Pace will mount its first exhibition of Weiner’s work at its Seoul gallery.

Weiner, who died in 2021 at age 79, is known for his flexible, generous praxis that centers on communication and defies definition or categorization by conventional means or method. A major figure in the international Conceptual art scene, Weiner proposed a radical new mode of creating that centered on questions of objecthood as it relates to both the maker and receiver of his work. Describing his medium as “language + the materials referred to,” the artist made use of words, syntax, symbols, and typography as subjects unto themselves, presenting his pieces in carefully arranged compositions and orientations—frequently accompanied by graphic elements rendered in his signature style—that inform their meaning.

Highlights on Pace’s booth at Frieze Seoul also include:

- A new Bodyscape painting by Lee Kun-Yong, whose work will be on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this fall as part of the group presentation Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s

- Two new paintings—Searching (2023) and DEATH, DEATH, DEATH (2023)—by Yoshitomo Nara

- Chariot Armor (2023), a new painting by Robert Nava, who populates his compositions with real and imagined creatures, landscapes, and objects

- A vibrant, large-scale painting created this year by Marina Perez Simão

- Julian Schnabel’s Trees of Home (for Peter Beard) 4 (2020), a recent work from the artist’s body of plate paintings that eschew traditional canvas in favor of a sculptural surface composed of broken crockery

- Two new sculptures by Joel Shapiro, who has maintained a deep interest in exploring—and occasionally erasing—the line between abstraction and figuration

- A group of recent cyanotype prints exploring the phenomenological qualities of light by Kiki Smith

On View at Pace Gallery in Seoul

Concurrent with Frieze Seoul, exhibitions dedicated to Yoshitomo Nara, Robert Nava, and David Byrne will be on view at Pace’s gallery in the Korean capital.

Some 140 ceramics and 30 drawings on paper and cardboard by Nara will be presented together in a unique installation that captures the essence of his ideas, feelings, and creative impulses. The ceramics—many of which Nara created in the past three years as part of an ongoing residency in Shigaraki, Japan, where one of the country’s six ancient kilns is located—will be exhibited within cabinets and atop custom wooden tables and shelves owned by the artist. A selection of objects from his personal collection will also be shown in these displays. Spirited exchanges among the works and items on view will abound the space, bringing into focus Nara’s sensibility of expression across different, yet inherently linked, materials and mediums.

Nava’s exhibition, which will mark his first solo show in Asia, will spotlight six paintings created this year. Varying in scale, these new works reflect the artist’s immense talent as both a painter and draftsman. Imbuing his depictions of fantastical creatures with philosophical and psychological import, Nava taps into a dark, contemplative, and existential space. In his new works, the artist returns to some of the most recognizable motifs in his visual lexicon—the shark, the ghost, and the bunny rabbit—while intensifying the density of his painted surfaces and further developing the narrative quality of the paintings.

In the gallery’s on-site Osulloc tea house, a focused presentation of works on paper by Byrne—a musician and artist who co-founded the band Talking Heads and is currently presenting his new musical Here Lies Love on Broadway— will be on view. Throughout his five-decade-long career, Byrne has nurtured a fine arts practice spanning drawing, photography, installation, performance, and design. His upcoming show in Seoul will include recent works from his ongoing dingbats series, which he began producing under quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a selection of his drawings from the early 2000s.

In addition to these shows, Weiner's PEELED PAST THE CORE will be on view on the gallery's facade and a new, never-before-exhibited installation by the duo Elmgreen & Dragset will be displayed on its third-floor terrace.

Museum Presentations in Seoul

UNDER THE SUN, a major survey dedicated to Lawrence Weiner, will be on view at the Amorepacific Museum of Art during Frieze Seoul and through January 28, 2024.Museum Presentations in Seoul

As part of the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (SMB12), Torkwase Dyson will present a newly commissioned sculpture at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) from September 5 to November 19.

On View in Seoul

Past

Yoshitomo Nara

Ceramic Works

Sep 5 – Oct 21, 2023

Seoul

Past

Robert Nava

Tornado Rose

Sep 5 – Oct 21, 2023

Seoul

Featured Works

Julian Schnabel

b. 1951, Brooklyn, New York

A career-spanning engagement with Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and a lifelong friendship with the artist Peter Beard are joined in Julian Schnabel’s enigmatic Trees of Home (for Peter Beard) 4 (2020). Painted in his distinctive style atop and amidst broken ceramics, this large-scale painting belongs to a body of six works executed in 2020 following the death of Beard, Schnabel’s friend since childhood and neighbor in Montauk, New York. Schnabel painted this scene from a photograph of trees in Saint-Rémy de Provence, contained in a book about van Gogh that his late friend wished to show him; the cerulean sky and the long shadows cast by the allée of gnarled trees evoke hot summer afternoons in the south of France, where Beard spent time in his 70s. Schnabel has demonstrated his interest in van Gogh across media, perhaps most notably in the film At Eternity’s Gate (2018), which Schnabel co-wrote and directed, starring Willem Dafoe as van Gogh in his final years. Through the prism of Trees of Home (for Peter Beard) 4, the artistic lineage connecting van Gogh, Beard, and Schnabel himself culminates in Schnabel's tactile approach to painting, an invocation that transmutes ceramic fragments, vessels of their own bygone stories, into a kaleidoscopic confluence of forms, colors, and collective histories. Dedicated to the memory of his friend, Trees of Home (for Peter Beard) 4 is a multifaceted homage rendered through the physical language of shattered ceramics and textured strokes.

Lawrence Weiner

b. 1942, New York, New York
d. 2021, New York, New York

Lawrence Weiner is recognized for his revolutionary explorations of language as both medium and concept. Born in New York’s South Bronx, Weiner graduated from Stuyvesant High School at age 16 and briefly attended Hunter College before setting out on his own. While still in high school, Weiner became a frequent participant in civil rights and anti-nuclear protests, events that would later shape his understanding of art as it relates to social responsibility. For Weiner, art making was about finding the “right question” rather than the “right answer.” His oeuvre is informed by philosophical inquiries, linguistic theories, and cultural references, underscoring his profound engagement with the inherent capacities of language as a vessel for artistic expression.

ON THE LINE OFF THE LINE (1997) is a quintessential manifestation of Weiner’s conceptual practice. Weiner listed the medium for his sculptures as “Language + the materials referred to,” underscoring the preeminence of language itself as art rather than its physical representation in space. In the present work, language is the material for construction, and the words themselves are prioritized over visual form. Weiner's manipulation of language as both medium and message draws viewers into an immersive dialogue, inviting contemplation of the interplay between language and context. Both an exploration of linguistics and spatial engagement, ON THE LINE OFF THE LINE demonstrates a conceptual elasticity that reflects the continuous flux of meaning in a world ever shifting between manifold modes of representation.

Untitled by Marina Perez Simão — Marina Perez Simão, *Untitled*, 2023, oil on linen, 78-3/4" × 66-15/16" × 1-3/8" (200 cm × 170 cm × 3.5 cm)

Marina Perez Simão

b. 1980, Vitória, Brazil

25862_SHAPIRO_v1-High Resolution ? 300 dpi — Joel Shapiro, *untitled*, 1994, bronze, 16-1/2 x 20 x 8-1/4" (41.9 x 50.8 x 21 cm) unique

Joel Shapiro

b. 1941, New York, New York

Kylie Manning

b. 1983, Juneau, Alaska

Kylie Manning’s enigmatic new painting King Tide (2023) draws its title from the titular oceanic phenomenon; occurring in the event of a perfect convergence of celestial bodies, when the sun, moon, and Earth align, a king tide is an especially high spring tide. Manning’s composition illustrates this exceptional happening, rendering the scene in aquatic blues, purples, and greens that punctuate earthen tones across the painting. King Tide demonstrates the artist’s distinctive process of combining pure pigments with safflower and walnut oil to create whirlwinds of thinly layered oil markings, resulting in diaphanous, multilayered compositions with extraordinary depth. In King Tide, amidst churning, frenetic brushstrokes, penetrating faces materialize, their bodies lost in the gyrating scene and receding into the mountainous horizon. The inherent movement in King Tide evokes Manning’s Spring 2023 collaboration with the New York City Ballet, for which the artist created the costume and set design in partnership with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. King Tide was executed alongside Manning’s work for the ballet, and as the artist explains, the present work “includes the speed, articulation, and unmistakable drawing marks akin to the sketches that were created during the ballet rehearsals.” Deeply informed by her experiences in and around the ocean, Manning’s oeuvre is in continuous conversation with the sea and storied seascape painters, including English Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner and 19th century American painter Winslow Homer. King Tide embodies an ephemeral moment of celestial alignment, offering a paean to the transcendent forces that shape both the ocean’s rhythms and Manning’s otherworldly practice.

Kiki Smith

b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany

Robert Nava

b. 1985, East Chicago, Indiana

Known for his energetic mark-making, bold color, and playful candidness, Robert Nava’spaintings mix popular contemporary influences with fantastic and natural protagonists. His chimeric subjects often combine features of animals, monsters, and religious figures. The hero of Chariot Armor (2023) is an angelic Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, here shown with a serene face, crowned with a halo, and encircled with shining mica dust.

The famed horse appears in many of Nava’s works, often combined with elements of sharks or modern machinery. The abstracted bottom half of the horse may refer to the Seraph, a type of angel known in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that Nava has referenced in interviews: “It’s interesting how certain mythology or religions overlap on another level... Especially with angels, you know. Different religions have different ones, different things they can do. Like, I didn’t know a Seraph apparently has six wings. The middle ones can fly, but the two on the bottom are like shields.”

The amalgamation of these disparate features and religious traditions fits well within Nava’s oeuvre, which revisits the same characters in good and evil roles, simultaneously aggressive and defensive. The artist’s trademark naïve, whimsical style belies the complexity of the subjects, creating a new canon of modern mythology.

Kenjiro Okazaki

Kenjiro Okazaki is an artist and critic whose polymathic practice spans architecture, literary theory, painting, relief, sculpture, robotics, and contemporary dance. He is widely recognized for his 2018 publication Abstract Art’s Influence: Exploring Modern Art, in which he draws from his expansive knowledge of art history and contemporary art to craft a discourse around the potential of abstract art. In 2002, Okazaki directed the Japanese pavilion at the International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, and in 2014 was honored with the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. The artist works at the intersections of his varied interests; in an interview for Frieze, Okazaki explains that his artistic process is reminiscent of 19th century French mathematician Henri Poincaré’s famous three-body problem, a classic mathematical challenge involving the gravitational interaction between three celestial bodies, where finding an exact solution for their motions is generally not feasible due to the complexity of their interactions. Okazaki compares the intricacy of this problem with the nuanced interchanges in his artistic process: “Writing, painting, framing (architecture) this multitasking is important to me, always, even if I don’t know how everything connects...I guess you could say that, through creation, we all belong to this place beyond the present moment in which we are positioned.”

Central to Okazaki’s oeuvre is his continuous engagement with artistic and literary canons. Tide from the Depth of Ages / Summer, 1869, Étretat (2021) evokes the color palette of the titular seaside French commune Étretat where, in 1869, French painter Gustave Courbet spent the summer, capturing the sheer white chalk cliffs and roiling sea in distinctive seascapes. Tide from the Depth of Ages / Summer, 1869, Étretat evokes the immensity and movement of Étretat’s landscape in a richly hued abstraction, characterized by thick swaths of acrylic paint. Okazaki’s new painting In such a place, a bird’s nest... [...] (2023) quotes 20th century Japanese translator and writer Tatsuo Hori in its title. One of Okazaki’s iconic T-shaped paintings, the work is composed of two perpendicular canvases with vibrant but sparing groupings of gestural marks. In Okazaki’s cosmos of artistic production, art history, literature, and texturally nuanced painting coalesce in a universe uniquely his own.