Focus Asia is the section of Frieze Seoul where you can discover exciting new talents, featuring ten solo presentations from Asia-based galleries that have opened since 2012. Stone Island, the official partner of the section, has covered 30% of each exhibitor’s stand fee. We asked one of the section’s advisers, Joselina Cruz (the director and curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila), to give us a tour.
Taiki Sakpisit, Dark Was the Night (2024), SAC Gallery, Bangkok
Courtesy of Taiki Sakpisit and SAC Gallery
This installation by Taiki Sakpisit reaches beyond the confines of the planet towards a hopeful future, but his hopes are not extraterrestrial. Instead, he searches closer to home. Connections—familial, physical, spiritual and psychological—are what his protagonist aspires to. The filmmaker’s video installation suggests that sound is the key that allows us to connect, physically, even to those who are not there.
Lu Yang, DOKU-The Flow (2024), Parcel, Tokyo
Courtesy of Lu Yang and Parcel
Using cutting-edge digital technology, the Chinese artist Lu Yang challenges our conceptions of how far technology can play into human biology. With his film DOKU-The Flow, Yang flits across the various virtual shells he has created as he seeks to invent a parallel of himself—an extension of his soul into the domain of the digital.
Suyeon Hwang, Black Effector (2023), G Gallery, Seoul
Courtesy of Sueyon Hwang and C Gallery
The strange forms of Suyeon Hwang belie the intense labour that goes into the production of each. Hwang layers material upon material, whether that’s loose sand bonded together, layers of aluminium foil hammered to a lump; or paper layered with graphite, glitter or effect spray. This practice of amassing approximates the material excess that contemporary society experiences with its abundance of objects, feeds, information and media.
Park Kyung Ryul, 17:50 - unknown, Baik Art, Seoul
Courtesy of Park Kyung Ryul and Baik Art
Park Kyung Ryul’s installations, which she calls “sculptural paintings”, are immersive environments. By combining various components taken from organic objects like leaves and branches with objects such as her paintings and mirrors, Park creates a dynamic multi-dimensional space of reflective surfaces.
Cho Hyori, Forward (2024), A-Lounge, Seoul
Courtesy of Cho Hyori and A-Lounge
Cho Hyori integrates the influence of digital media into her work by exploring identity, memory and the intersection of past and present. She collages hyperrealist images with materials such as resin and overlays them with text in a nod to the barely visible watermarks that mark the ownership of digital images.
Supawich Weesapen, The unknown ray, be remembered (2024), Nova Contemporary, Bangkok
Courtesy of Supawich Weesapen and Nova Contemporary
Supawich Weesapen’s extraordinarily painted canvases almost seem backlit, as they glow like the screens we are constantly faced with. Even his experience of the sublime comes from scrolling through endless images on his mobile. In this installation, he looks to the contemporary sublime that is science fiction, with his abstractions referring to otherworldly depths.
Kingsley Gunatillake, War Text (2023), Blueprint 12, New Delhi
Courtesy of Kingsley Guntillake and Blueprint 12
The Sri Lankan artist Kingsley Gunatillake has made works using books since the 1990s, his focus being his country’s history of civil war. As the artist responds to the violence he has seen, he looks to literature to carry the burden of protest as a witness to atrocities and loss of life, but also as a tool to remake and regain a certain sense of peace.
Jonghwan Lee, Narcissus IX (2024), Cylinder, Seoul
Courtesy of Jonghwan Lee and Cylinder
The works of Jonghwan Lee are experiments in painting materials and their capacity to create worlds in which viewers can lose themselves. His watercolours on wood panels are “scarred” to reveal the panels’ rings and knots. In a kind of reverse trompe l’oeil, these gestural swathes carved on to the panels blend in with the pastel wash.
Sojung Jun, Syncope (2023), Barakat Contemporary, Seoul
Courtesy of Barakat Contemporary and Sojung Jun
Syncope is a high-resolution moving image project which can be hijacked through an app to access its filmic spaces by planting digital data; the data then entrenches itself, snaking through the film and appearing like a viral hack. Sojung Jun also turns to sound as a motif, a means by which to measure speed and the various ways we live and engage in the world.