Seoul gets another art fair as Art Busan opens design-led outpost

Seoul is ready to get a brand new truthful in November centered on artwork and design, after the corporate organising Artwork Busan, a good within the nation’s south, secured funding to open an occasion within the capital. The inaugural DEFINE Seoul (1-5 November, titled after “design” and “superb artwork”), will function round 35 exhibitors and happen within the Seongsu design district, centred across the Layer Studio cultural complicated, however with occasions spilling out into design studios and different areas throughout the neighbourhood.

“We’re witnessing elevated consideration on Korea’s artwork and cultural scene from overseas like by no means earlier than,” says Seokho Jeong, Artwork Busan’s managing director. Certainly, because the launch of Frieze Seoul, town has seemingly cemented itself as a key market hub, however Jeong says that Artwork Busan has been “rigorously monitoring the market” since properly earlier than the appearance of Frieze Seoul, and was “contemplating numerous prospects to broaden previous to Covid”. In 2020, Artwork Busan staged a separate design part at its Busan truthful, as a trial run for a standalone occasion.

Whereas Frieze Seoul caters extra to Western tastes, the organisers of DEFINE say their truthful will deal with an “jap aesthetic and Korean heritage”. The inside designer Teo Yang, who has joined the truthful as its creative director, will organise the inaugural version across the theme of “A glance inside matter”.

The Seoul truthful represents a giant step up for the Artwork Busan model, which has staged an annual truthful in Busan since 2012. Jeong says that Artwork Busan will proceed to broaden in 2024, each in offline and digital settings, however will stay a model “centered on the artwork market”. Nonetheless, he says that “usually, enjoyable concepts pop up once we collaborate with or monitor what is occurring in different industries”. The primary funding spherical, which raised an undisclosed sum, was supported by Sanghun Kim, former chief govt of Naver; Kelvin Dongho Kim, chief govt of Korea Credit score Knowledge (KCD); Tony Lyu, enterprise associate at SoftBank Ventures Asia; and Simon Seojoon Kim, chief govt of Hashed. The subsequent funding spherical will happen in autumn subsequent yr.