Exploring Both the Depth and Contemporary Reach of Tradition

Envisioning Future Ways of Living through Traditional Culture

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – Arumjigi Foundation, led by Chairwoman J. Kathryn Hong, will participate in Material Practices at Frieze Seoul 2026, taking place at COEX in Seoul from September 2 to 5. Ahead of the fair, the Foundation will open its 2026 Exhibition Within the Folds on August 27 at its Tongui-dong headquarters.

One is an international art platform commanding global attention; the other is Arumjigi’sTongui-dong headquarters, where the Foundation has long presented the results of its research. Viewed together, the two initiatives bring Arumjigi’s position into sharper focus. Its step onto the international stage is not a one-off event, but a natural extension of 25 years spent researching and reinterpreting Korea’s cultures of clothing, food, and housing. Arumjigi regards tradition not as a legacy frozen in time, but as a source of wisdom and beauty through which to consider how we live today. Through the attitudes and values embedded in Korean culture, the Foundation seeks to show that preserving tradition and engaging with the world are part of the same endeavor.

This outlook is encapsulated in Arumjigi’s 2026 slogan, Heritage Tomorrow – an invitation to carry forward what matters, together. It proposes that artisans and designers, researchers and the public come together to sustain tradition as a culture that anyone can experience and take part in. At a time marked by climate crisis, natural disasters, social fragmentation, and trends that are consumed and forgotten at ever-increasing speed, Arumjigi turns to the essential values held within traditional culture. What do we value, and how do we choose to live? Rather than offering fixed answers, the two exhibitions create space for visitors to
reflect on their own lives today.

Frieze Seoul 2026: Material Practices – Arumjigi Booth (MP7)

At Frieze Seoul, the Arumjigi booth welcomes visitors into an immersive environment where they can experience a way of living shaped by traditional Korean values. Within a setting that brings the proportions of the traditional hanok into dialogue with the sensibilities of
contemporary chair-based living, visitors are invited to pause and reconsider the relevance of tradition. With its focus on materials and processes at the intersection of craft, design, and contemporary art, Frieze Seoul’s Material Practices section closely aligns with
Arumjigi’s longstanding effort to bring tradition into contemporary life.

The installation unfolds through two carefully composed spatial scenes. The first reimagines the sarangbang , a scholar’s room rooted in the floor-seated culture of the Joseon dynasty. Enveloped in hanji, traditional Korean paper, the intimate space translates
into a contemporary language the restraint and openness of the scholar’s life, along with its deep relationship to nature. The second scene is a space of exchange and hospitality informed by Korea’s historical standing culture. Works by ceramic artists Kwon Dae-sup, Lee Hun-chung, and Inchin Lee, together with those of yeomjang (master bamboo-blind artisan) Cho Dae-yong – all longtime collaborators of Arumjigi – come together to create a resonant encounter among objects, people, and time.

Through four themes – how we relate to time, how we regard objects, how we make, and how we form relationships – the exhibition offers an immediate expression of the values that shape Arumjigi’s vision of life. Floor-seated and standing ways of living from different periods are presented not as fragments of a disconnected past, but as part of a continuous cultural trajectory that reaches into the present, inviting visitors to imagine the lives we may choose to create in the future.

Arumjigi Exhibition 2026: Within the Folds 

Within the Folds is the eighth exhibition in Arumjigi’s annual exhibition series to focus on clothing – one of the three pillars of traditional Korean culture, alongside food and housing. Centered on the chima, the traditional Korean skirt that has accompanied the lives of Korean women for centuries, the exhibition traces the rich continuum of Korean dress culture from antiquity to the present. Unlike many Western skirts, whose silhouettes are largely determined by their cut, the traditional Korean chima fully takes shape only when worn: air gathers between its layers, allowing the silhouette to shift continuously with the movement of the body and the wind. Across three chapters, the exhibition unfolds the structural principles and aesthetic language of layering, which create a form that is difficult to imagine before it is set in motion on the body. 

The first chapter, ‘Where the Chima Takes Shape,’ charts changes in skirt types across different periods. Rarely seen examples are brought together, ranging from pleated skirts depicted in Goguryeo tomb murals and skirts constructed from wool and felt to a Unified Silla-period chima embroidered with iridescent jewel beetle wings that change color with the viewer’s angle. The second chapter, ‘Sentiments Stitched into the Chima,’ focuses on the devotion of artisans working across dyeing, weaving, and needlework, as well as on women’s enduring desire for beauty across time. Among the works on view is the Flower-and-Bird Embroidered Seuran Chima excavated from the tomb of Lady Yi of the Seongsan clan, the only surviving embroidered chima of its kind in Korea – a testament to beauty sustained despite the restrictions of its time and an arduous making process. The final chapter, ‘Chima Unfolded Today,’ presents new works by contemporary designers who reinterpret the structure and aesthetics of the traditional chima in the language of the present. 

Developed through in-depth research with Onjium Clothing Studio, the exhibition closely examines and reconstructs the structural techniques of the traditional chima. Contemporary fashion brands LEJE, JADEN CHO, and JiyongKim contribute their own distinct interpretations. LEJE places native plants and mother-of-pearl on an embroidered chima; JADEN CHO reimagines the splendor of historical aristocratic culture through contemporary embroidery and sequins; and JiyongKim combines zero-waste pattern cutting with Sun-Bleach, a process in which fabric is faded by sunlight. Together, the works demonstrate how tradition can come into full bloom through creative practice today. 

A series of public programs will invite visitors to engage more deeply with the exhibition’s themes. On September 12, an artist talk with LEJE, JADEN CHO, and JiyongKim will explore how the designers reinterpreted the traditional chima through contemporary fashion. Special evening openings featuring media art and other exhibition-related programs will also take place throughout the exhibition. 

A Dialogue Between Depth and Expansion 

Together, the two presentations offer a multifaceted view of both the foundations of Korean traditional culture and its contemporary expansion. At the Tongui-dong headquarters, visitors can look closely at the aesthetics of the chima and its layered construction; at the Frieze Seoul booth, they can experience proportions drawn from traditional culture and their extension into contemporary craft and design. 

“While our Tongui-dong headquarters represents the depth of Arumjigi’s 25 years of research, Frieze Seoul offers a platform for sharing its value with international audiences,” said J. Kathryn Hong, Chairwoman of Arumjigi Foundation. “We hope visitors moving between the two venues will fully experience the sensory richness that Korean traditional culture has to offer.” 

Arumjigi will continue to create opportunities for traditional culture to remain in close dialogue with contemporary life across the interconnected realms of clothing, food, and housing. 

Exhibition Details 

Frieze Seoul 2026: Material Practices – Arumjigi Booth (MP7)

Venue
COEX, 513 Yeongdong-daero, Gangnam-gu, Seoul

Artists
Kwon Dae-sup (Ceramics), Lee Hun-chung (Ceramics), Inchin Lee (Ceramics), Cho Dae-yong (Bamboo craft)

Exhibition Dates
September 2 – 5, 2026

Arumjigi Exhibition 2026: Within the Folds

Exhibition Dates
August 27 – November 15, 2026 (Closed on Mondays, Sep 24–27, and Oct 13)

Venue
Arumjigi Foundation, 17 Hyoja-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul

Organized and presented by
Arumjigi Foundation

In collaboration with
Onjium, the research institute for traditionl heritages affiliated with the Joongang Hwadong Foundation

Supported by
Cartier; Eagon Park Young-Joo Cultural Foundation; Korea Mecenat Association; Arts Council Korea; EANIT BEAMPLE

Participating research studio
Onjium Clothing Studio

Participating designers
LEJE; JADEN CHO; JiyongKim

Admission
KRW 10,000 (general adult admission)

Website
http://www.arumjigi.org

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/arumjigi/

Contact
arum@arumjigi.org

About Arumjigi Foundation

Founded in 2001, Arumjigi Foundation is a non-profit cultural foundation dedicated to rediscovering the beauty, values, and spirit of traditional Korean culture, bringing them into contemporary life, and sharing them with the world.

Through research, exhibitions, collaborations with artisans and creators, and contemporary interpretations of cultural heritage, Arumjigi explores ways for tradition to remain a living and evolving part of everyday life.

Website: http://www.arumjigi.org | Instagram: @arumji 

About Onjium 

Founded in 2013, Onjium is a research institute for traditionl heritages affiliated with the Joongang Hwadong Foundation. Through research, education, exhibitions, publications, and creative practice across the fields of food, clothing, and housing, Onjium seeks to inherit the wisdom of the past while creating meaningful cultural legacies for the future. 

Website: http://www.onjium.org | Instagram: @onjium 

About Contemporary Designers 

LEJE 

Je Yang-mo and Kang Joo-hyung are the co-founders and creative directors of LEJE, a fashion label based in Seoul and Paris. After studying fashion in Paris and gaining professional experience at Lanvin, Alaïa, and Balmain, they established LEJE, taking its name from the French word le je (“I”). Their practice reinterprets the values and aesthetic sensibilities embedded in Korean traditional crafts and the spirit of craftsmanship through an experimental, contemporary lens, continually translating the beauty shaped by generations of artisans into the language of modern fashion. 

LEJE has presented collections on international stages, including Paris Fashion Week, and is carried by leading concept stores in more than ten countries, including Revolve and H. Lorenzo. The brand’s projects span fashion, craft, and design through collaborations with Sulwhasoo and Swarovski, as well as participation in trade fairs such as Salone del Mobile Milano. Through stage productions and cultural arts projects with artists in Korea and abroad—including creatingEJAE’s attire for Academy Awards and collaborating with BLACKPINK’s Jennie—LEJE has brought the aesthetics of Korea to a global audience. In recognition of its distinctive vision, LEJE was named one of FAHK (Fashion Asia Hong Kong)’s “10 Asian Designers to Watch” in 2026 and selected as a finalist for the Vogue × YOOX Challenge, continuing to expand its presence on the international stage while remaining rooted in Korean aesthetic traditions. 

JADEN CHO 

Cho Sung-min is the designer and creative director of the fashion label JADEN CHO, whose work explores the intersection of the formal qualities of historical clothing and the materials and functionality of contemporary fashion. Reinterpreting the structure, ornamentation, and functionality of traditional clothing through a contemporary lens, he proposes new expressions of Korean aesthetics. 

After graduating from the Department of Fashion Design at Kookmin University in 2016, Cho pursued an MA in Womenswear at the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom, where he developed an experimental and conceptual approach to fashion design, completing the program in 2020. In 2021, he founded the womenswear label JADEN CHO and launched UMBER POSTPAST, through which he has undertaken projects spanning fashion, Korean craft, and cultural research. 

In 2025, JADEN CHO presented its first solo runway show, marking a significant expansion of the brand’s worldview. The following year, the brand opened its first flagship store, translating its identity—grounded in Korean aesthetics and craftsmanship—into a physical space. 

His work is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and he continues to present his designs at Seoul Fashion Week as well as through exhibitions and collaborative projects in Korea and abroad. As the recipient of the 21st Samsung Fashion & Design Fund (SFDF), Cho has emerged as one of Korea’s most promising womenswear designers. 

JiyongKim 

Kim Jiyong is a Korean fashion designer and the founder and creative director of the eponymous label JiyongKim. After studying at Bunka Fashion College in Japan, he completed both his BA and MA in Menswear at Central Saint Martins in the United Kingdom, where he conducted in-depth research into patternmaking, garment construction, and textile materials. He subsequently gained industry experience at Lemaire and Louis Vuitton in France, broadening his perspective on the global fashion industry. 

In 2021, Kim launched his namesake brand, developing the Sun-Bleaching technique—using only natural sunlight to bleach fabric—into a distinctive design language that embraces the role of time and nature in the creative process. Through meticulous patternmaking and experimental garment construction, he has reimagined the conventions of menswear, developing a distinctive aesthetic while expanding the brand’s creative practice through projects encompassing fashion, installation, and exhibition. 

Kim’s originality and experimental approach have earned him widespread international recognition. He was selected as a semifinalist for the 2024 LVMH Prize, received the Samsung Fashion & Design Fund (SFDF) in both 2023 and 2024, and was invited as the Special Guest Designer at Pitti Uomo 110. 

(Text and images courtesy of Arumjigi Foundation)

At Frieze Seoul 2026, drawingRoom presents artistic visions that puts forward a process-centered understanding of Korean contemporary art, where the material intelligence and crafted rigor are emphasized as essential tools for revisiting the presence of the lived experience today. Eight Korean artists (Donghoon Rhee, Jinsik Yoo, Leebinsoyeon, Miyeon Yi, Sanoh Lee, Sooji Lee, Sungoo Im, Yoo Jung Ellie Choi) explore personal themes of identity, place, memory, and everyday realities through labor-intensive and craft-driven performative processes involving precise material decisions.

Twelve to fifteen artworks will be primarily hung or placed along the walls of the booth. The works are composed of two-dimensional media as well as sculptural figures that transcend beyond technique, engaging materials (wood, paper, graphite, threads, ceramic) and crafted rigor (sewing, wood carving, papier-mâché) as frames of thoughts from which the artists explore how personal narratives are formed, how memory is re-constructed, and how ordinary actions disclose hidden cultural frameworks.

Donghoon Rhee (b.1991, based in Seoul, Korea) explores the relationship between sculpture and painting through wood-based sculptural practice. Accumulating the gestures of making and the material qualities of wood throughout his process, he creates works that move between sculpture and image, surface and volume, inviting renewed ways of perceiving the relationship between objects and perception.

He received his BFA in Painting from Kyung Hee University and MFA in Fine Arts from Seoul National University of Science and Technology. His recent solo exhibitions include Light Choreography (Gallery SP, Seoul, 2023), Woman (VSF & Milk, Los Angeles, 2022), The statue knows how to dance (Gallery SP, Seoul, 2021), and Room with Flowers (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2019). Selected group exhibitions include Symbiotic Planet (Geumcheon Art Factory, Seoul, 2025), Breathe in, Breathe out (Wooran Foundation, Seoul, 2024), 7th Changwon Sculpture Biennale Prologue Exhibition – Speaking about the future : Shape, Map, Tree (Seongsan Art Hall, Changwon, 2023), and Sculptural Impulse (Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2022), among others. He was an artist-in-residence at Seoul Art Space Geumcheon in 2025, and his works are held in the collections of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Art Bank, Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art, and Ulsan Art Museum.

Jinsik Yoo (b.1985, based in US and Korea) explores the transformation of clay from a flat surface into self-supporting sculpture. The material qualities of clay and the traces of the artist’s hand accumulated throughout the making process shape abstract figures that evoke both human and animal forms, fluidly traversing social categories such as nationality, gender, and status. By suspending fixed systems of classification, his sculptures suggest the possibility of multiple modes of existence coexisting.

He received his BFA in Communication and Graphic Design from Konkuk University before completing graduate studies in Ceramics at the same institution. He later earned an MFA in Ceramic Art from Alfred University, New York. Alongside his independent practice in New York, he worked as a fabrication team member in Simone Leigh’s studio. His recent solo exhibitions include A Certain Garden (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2025), Palimpsest (The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, 2025) and Procession (Jane Hartsook Gallery, New York, 2024). He was selected for the NCECA Emerging Artists Fellowship (2021) and 57 Korean Sculptors in 30s and 40s (Art In Culture, September 2021). His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art of Medellin, Colombia, and the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, USA. His installation project at the Banana Republic SoHo Flagship Store in New York was acquired in its entirety.

Leebinsoyeon (b.1988, based in Seoul, Korea) develops an artistic practice that examines the politics of the outsider through exaggerated and deliberately improbable narratives. Within her works, sincerity and humor, reality and fiction intersect to form distinctive narrative structures. Rather than occupying the position of an exemplary subject within a community or accepting fixed identities imposed by social labels, Lee deliberately resists categorization. This position gives rise to subtle moments of estrangement that shape the unique atmosphere and sensibility of her work. She studied Visual Communication Design at Kyung Hee University. Her solo exhibitions include Nothing(0) Department (sangheeut, Seoul, 2024), Love on the Air (YPC Space, Seoul, 2022), and Final Touch (3standardstoppage, Beijing, 2021; Jeonsigonggan, Seoul, 2020). Recent group exhibitions include 12th Amado Art Annuale: In Progress (Amado Art Space, Seoul, 2025), Floating Worlds: Bed, Bath, Bus (Sehwa Museum of Art, Seoul, 2025), Mysterious Solidarity of Messengers (Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, 2024), and How Does Performance Art Work? (Platform-L Contemporary Art Center, Seoul, 2023).

Miyeon Yi (b.1995, based in London, UK) works primarily with tempera to explore the shifting boundaries between the visible and the invisible, presence and absence. Drawing upon childhood memories, she reconstructs fragmented spaces within the picture plane, where scenes and emotions from different times and places coexist. Her paintings expand into layered narrative environments that connect multiple temporalities and dimensions, extending beyond the canvas into antique objects with opening doors that invite encounters between parallel possibilities.

She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MA from the Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include Holding on to Gravity (Long Story Short, New York, 2025), Domestic Flights (Frestonian Gallery, London, 2025), Buzz~ Buzz~ Buzz~ (Linseed Projects, Shanghai, 2024), and Asia Now (MOU PROJECTS, Paris, 2024).

Sanoh Lee (b.1996, based in Seoul, Korea) creates poetic reflections on life and death through clay, paper, and graphite. Drawing connections between the structures through which text and image are generated, she explores the relationships among different creative languages. Borrowing motifs from literature, she constructs associations between text and image, unfolding surreal compositions that resemble the process of writing. Recurring bird imagery—referencing the bird-and-flower tradition of Korean painting as a messenger between life and death—serves as a poetic motif through which intuition, premonition, and unseen presences become perceptible.

She received her BFA in Korean Painting from Sejong University and MFA in Ceramic Craft from Seoul National University of Science and Technology. Her solo exhibitions include Eclipse Plumage (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2025), Island of Pale Languages (Project Space mu.mokjeok, Seoul, 2023), and Things that can’t be explained like praying (What Artist Do, Seoul, 2022). Recent group exhibitions include Till 7, From 7 (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2026), Golden Arrow (TINC, Seoul, 2024), Mysterious Solidarity of Messengers (Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, 2024), and Vitarium (Shinhan Gallery, Seoul, 2023).

Sooji Lee (b.1986, based in Seoul, Korea) is deeply interested in how things are made. Her practice develops through the creation of processes, systems, and tools that generate subsequent works, rather than following a linear sequence from beginning to end. Methodologies initiated in one project are continuously expanded, transformed, and carried into the next. Working through accumulations of minute material units that form clusters and densities, Lee embraces what she calls a “Slow Process,” foregrounding manual labor and intuitive making as fundamental components of her practice.

She received her BA in Industrial Design from Hongik University and MA in Information Design from Design Academy Eindhoven. Her solo exhibitions include No Content Available (WWNN, Seoul, 2025), Glitch-philic (Soorim Cube, Seoul, 2024), 4 Tools (Soorim Art Center, Seoul, 2023), Form forming, Formation (Inchon Art Platform, Seoul, 2023), Liminal Phase (OCI Museum, Seoul, 2022), and When Attitudes Become Typeface (4bid Gallery, Amsterdam, 2017). Recent group exhibitions include Generative Forms (Songeun Art Space, Seoul, 2026), Symbiotic Planet (Art Space Geumcheon, Seoul, 2025), Cheongju Craft Biennale (Cheongju Craft Biennale Exhibition Hall, Cheongju, 2021), and Open Studio (Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, 2019). Since 2025, She has been an artist-in-residence at Art Space Geumcheon. She has also participated in residency programs at MMCA(National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) Goyang Residency (2024), SeMA(Seoul Museum of Art) Nanji Residency (2023), Incheon Art Platform (2022), and Jan van Eyck, Maastricht (2019).

Sungoo Im (b.1990, based in Seoul, Korea) works primarily with paper and graphite, she creates drawings that trace fragments of life discovered within personal narratives. Weaving together subtle connections between private experiences and public events, Im constructs pictorial spaces that unfold like intricately woven narratives. Balancing melancholy with quiet humor, her works weave together overlapping memories of individuals, families, homes, and cities into layered landscapes of shared experience. Through these intimate narratives, she preserves the traces of a rapidly changing society and the collective memories that might otherwise fade away.

She received both her BFA and MFA in the Department of Fine Arts from Seoul National University of Science and Technology. Her recent solo exhibitions include A Castle Built of Dust (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), Wall · Rock · Flood · Oneself (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2022), A Flower Which Can’t Even Be Seen: Excavating Footprints (SeMA Storage, Seoul, 2022), The Days Were Strange and Peaceful (Hakgojae Design Project Space, Seoul, 2020), and Black Sand on Paper (Gallery Chosun, Seoul, 2019). She has participated in major group exhibitions such as Dreaming by Day (Wooran Foundation, Seoul, 2026), Folding Acts (Coreana Museum, Seoul, 2026), Dear My Forest (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, 2024), Doosan Artlab 2022 (Doosan Gallery, Seoul, 2022), and Unfamiliar Expedition (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2021). She is currently an artist-in-residence at MMCA Goyang Residency and has previously participated in residency programs at Suwon Art Studio (Korea, 2025), Incheon Art Platform (Korea, 2023), and Yangju Art Studio (Korea, 2022).

Yoo Jung Ellie Choi (b.1994, based in Seoul and New York) explores the relationship between contemporary domestic space and the psychological landscapes of its inhabitants. Through modern interiors occupied by solitary figures, she constructs scenes where emotional states are projected onto architectural space. Doors, windows, and staircases recur as liminal structures, allowing subtle surreal elements to permeate otherwise familiar environments.

She received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA in Fine Arts from Korea National University of Arts. Recent exhibitions include Velvet Hammers (FIM, Seoul, 2025), Behind You, I Exist (Peres Projects, Berlin, 2025), and Beyond Window (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2024).

All images must be credited as provided.

Images are for promotional use only and may not be edited.

Venue
Booth C16, COEX, Seoul

Artists
Donghoon Rhee, Jinsik Yoo, Leebinsoyeon, Miyeon Yi, Sanoh Lee, Sooji Lee, Sungoo Im, Yoo Jung Ellie Choi

Exhibition Dates
September 2 – 5, 2026

Website
https://www.drawingroom.kr/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/drawingroomseoul/

Contact
drawingroomseoul@gmail.com

(Text and images courtesy of drawingRoom)

CAPTION is pleased to present works by Yongjae Lee (b. 1991, South Korea) for the 2026 edition of Frieze Seoul. 

Lee’s artistic practice can be read through the axes of event and temporality. Creating works that can be considered both painting and meta-images, Lee articulates his methodology as meta-geurim, or ‘meta-pictorial.’ Through his continuous probing and destabilizing of Korean and Western painting traditions, his works become sites of layered, open dialogue, reverberating across medium and time. 

Lee inquires relentlessly into the layered temporalities of painting and a ‘post-original’ aesthetics, referring to the impossibility of cultural totalities in the contemporary era, along with the treatment of historical materials and archival records as units that are infinitely referenced, processed, and circulated as currency. The works on view incorporate fragments of records from the early modern period preserved in the Smithsonian Archives, which present such images as factual yet ultimately resist resolution. 

In the Gaehwa series, reconstructed photographs depicting laborers tattooed in irezumi and Emperor Gojong’s reception room are superimposed to engender a subtle tension. The series takes its name from the late 19th-century period of modernization in Korea, also referred to as the ‘Enlightenment movement,’ while simultaneously recalling its literal meaning ‘to blossom.’ 

Gaehwa 04 and Gaehwa 05 are works of a homogenous palette, derived from two photographs taken in different regions and printed around the same period (late 19th to early 20th century). Intrigued by photographs documenting the Japanese tradition of irezumi, Lee fuses disparate historical allusions to spark a dialectic charged with ambiguous tension. In Gaehwa 02, a portion of a classical Hanmun poetic couplet by the Joseon literati painter and political regent Heungseon Daewongun is inscribed onto the tattooed body of a Japanese laborer from the Meiji era. The series also includes portraits of Joseon’s final rulers, whose faces appear transcribed with irezumi. Discernible on the surface of these photographic prints are multiple overlapping strata of printed image and painted pigment, layered with the depictions of the human body and imagery engraved upon flesh. 

Beyond mere reference to tradition and archives, Lee instantiates new narratives by reinterpreting the lacunae in between. Visual indeterminacies in his oeuvre operate as generative apertures, a result of hyper-temporal gestures that complicate established histories. As such, ambiguity gives way to potentiality, continually unfolding through pictorial grammar and trace. 

Yongjae Lee (b.1991) 

Yongjae Lee’s practice explores the structure and temporality of painting. He speaks about painting through painting, creating paintings that represent other paintings. Drawing on Eastern and Western art histories, printed reproductions, and digital images as points of reference, he explores the grammar of painting and the conditions through which it takes shape. Lee regards tradition not as a fixed past, but as a heritage continuously formed and reformed through specific historical and cultural contexts. By citing and repositioning images from different periods and sources, he establishes new relationships between them and attends to what he describes as the “post-original state,” constructing narratives that extend beyond representation. His work is grounded in the methodology of the meta-picture, borrowing and transforming the structures of earlier paintings and the imagery of others. 

Through this process, painting becomes an ongoing conversation and a sustained field of research. 

ABOUT CAPTION 

CAPTION is a contemporary art gallery based in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Founded in 2023, the space presents distinct visual vernaculars and practices from Korea and abroad. Working in close alignment with its artists, it aims to foreground visionary perspectives to cultivate long-term creative trajectories through curated exhibitions, publications, and collaborative projects.Positioned as a facilitator between creators and audiences, CAPTION gathers diverse viewpoints and recontextualizes them to explore new discourses in art. The gallery serves as a vital nexus connecting artists with collectors, nurturing visions as they evolve into sustainable careers. As an experimental space unconstrained by medium or discipline, CAPTION strives to offer multi-layered artistic experiences within the dynamic landscape of contemporary art. 

Venue
Booth F07, COEX, Seoul

Artists
Yongjae Lee 

Exhibition Dates
September 2 – 5, 2026

Website
https://www.captionseoul.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/caption.seoul/

Contact
info@captionseoul.com 

(Text and images courtesy of CAPTION)

CON_ is pleased to present a solo presentation by Seoul-based artist Minhee Kim in the Focus section of Frieze Seoul 2026 (Booth F05), running from Wednesday, September 2 to Saturday, September 5, 2026, at COEX, Seoul.

Kim has long turned her attention to the idealized images of women shaped by contemporary media—K-pop, anime, internet culture—and to the social forces that lie behind them. Working primarily in oil and acrylic, she sets flawless, smooth skin against raw, disrupted texture, holding beauty and rupture in a precarious balance. Her recent work has taken a radical turn: images that appear fragmented, repeated, and shattered, recalling the visual states of glitch, error, and lag.

The presentation is built around a site-specific wall painting, executed on site by the artist across the triangular-prism walls of the booth, together with a group of new paintings from 2026: Sky, Tattoo, Membrane, Heaven, and Echo. Extending the mural practice she began with Body Landscape (2025), Kim takes on a paradox here: the attempt to free herself from a fixed iconography while never fully escaping it, a state in which liberation and control coexist. Rather than resolving this contradiction, she confronts it directly and allows both forces to occupy the same surface. In CON_’s booth, this landscape of discord expands into the tensions between body and spirit, the PC and the non-PC, the profane and the sacred.

Minhee Kim: Emancipatory Self-Exploitation, Born Only of Wounds and Tears
—— On the Occasion of Minhee Kim’s Presentation at Frieze Seoul 2026
Jieon Lee

Wounds and tears do not necessarily bring pain. Where a wound has healed, new flesh grows stronger; on a face washed by tears, nothing remains. Minhee Kim’s paintings take shape as the residue left in the wake of their passing.

In her own words, her practice arises from the personal experience of being exposed to a culture in which a particular ideal of feminine beauty operates as a social norm. From this starting point she examines women’s self-representation and the complex emotional responses embedded within it: desire, lack, and fixation on the idealized body.*1 Her early paintings relied on photographs and directly observed subjects, suggesting a mode of representation that inevitably arrived at predictable outcomes. In her past solo exhibitions Okinawa Fantasy (2018, Hapjungjigu) and Ghost Bikini (2019, Out_Sight), filled with virgin ghosts and uncanny landscapes, the artist layered an imagination under her own control over the represented scene, ultimately completing the image. Consider, however, her recent solo exhibition Berserker (2024, Museumhead). In contrast to earlier works that layered imagination and metaphor over reality, here she made a radical turn toward images that appear fragmented, repeated, and shattered, evoking the visual states of glitch, error, and lag. In that exhibition she depicted the female berserker as an enigmatic mythical archetype, presented as a wounded heroine. The body of the ferocious female warrior is at once glorified and deconstructed, navigating a delicate balance between self-expression and external desire.*2 For Kim, then, the pursuit of an unattainable ideal of womanhood—the process of striding boldly toward it and inevitably falling short—is embedded equally in her life and in her painting.

Turning to the works shown in Clumsy Seamless (2025, Kumho Museum of Art), we encounter Body Landscape (2025), a mural depicting the torso of an angelic warrior. The mural is defined by deliberate blankness. Its emptiness arises not only from the physical expanse of the wall itself but also from Kim’s own proposition that a work is completed precisely through incompleteness, through the refusal to fill in what is left open. Skin Landscape (2025), placed beside the mural, appears instead to choose incompleteness through fragmentation rather than blankness. As the two titles ending in “Landscape” suggest, she faithfully brings to the surface the errors and residues that emerge across the material and immaterial worlds, along with the collisions between them and the painter. This negotiation continues in the mural for her presentation at Frieze Seoul 2026. Here Kim takes on a paradox: attempting to free herself from a fixed iconography while being unable to escape it entirely, a state in which liberation and control coexist. Rather than resolving this contradiction, she confronts it head-on and allows both forces to occupy the same surface. These frictions are not blurred; they persist. In CON_’s solo booth for Minhee Kim, this landscape of discord expands into tensions between body and spirit, the PC and the non-PC, the profane and the sacred. She describes the works in this presentation as an exploration of shifting states that take shape as digital images are translated into painting. According to the artist, Sky (2026), the largest work in the presentation, is formed in a manner similar to Skin Landscape (2025), in that fragmented forms surface together as they intermingle. Unlike the earlier work, in which a single figure seemed to spread in every direction, Sky places on either side of a resolute face forms suggesting mechanical viscera, as if peering inside a ribcage, and a pair of high-heeled legs that seem to hover precariously in midair. The tension between desire and reality, between an unattainable ideal and an irreconcilable present, unfolds across the picture plane like a diorama. The central figure has sky-blue eyes painted over her own; her gaze, directed from below to above, lends the image an unsettling precariousness. This uneasy fusion and hybridity continues in Tattoo (2026). Drawing on the way David Cronenberg’s films—Naked Lunch (1991), The Fly (1986)—weave together objects, humans, and insects, placing their characters in scenes where hallucination and reality are hard to distinguish, Kim fragments an assemblage of front and back, human and non-human, and attempts to translate it into a single field of halftone dots. Finally, Heaven (2026), within its vast and intricately layered confusion, seems to reflect the artist herself and the countless emotions of the countless beings that surround her. As the image splits into ever-smaller fragments and fissures filled with color and vein-like strands of hair open up, the portrait of a weeping woman emerges from between them.

Tears embody neither joy nor sorrow completely. What they reflect, rather, is a transformation that sheds a layer of skin; the irony of longing for an ideal while standing firmly in reality; and a vision of femininity embodied by the artist herself, who must endure this same state of confusion. In this sense, tears mark a movement toward the new—a movement of liberation through self-exploitation, accompanied by the fissures born of the wounds and fragmentation that tears bring.

*1: Minhee Kim, “Artist’s Note” (2026).
*2: Excerpted from the curatorial statement for Berserker (2024, Museumhead), written by Hojeong Heo

About the Artist

Born in Seoul, Korea in 1991. Lives and works in Seoul. Completed her BFA in Painting at Sejong University in 2014, followed by her MFA in Painting at Hongik University in 2019.

Kim’s practice focuses on the idealized images of women shaped by contemporary media—K-pop, anime, and internet culture—and explores the social dynamics that lie beneath them. Working primarily in oil and acrylic, she renders the body through a contrast between flawless, smooth skin and rough, raw texture, striking a balance between beauty and rupture. Desire, shame, and the pressures concealed beneath perfection rise to the surface; while referencing the images of beauty widely circulated in Korea, her work also reflects the artist’s own sense of unconsciously drawing closer to those figures. Through motifs of transformation, glitch, and the reconstructed body, her paintings simultaneously reflect the allure of beauty and youth in Korean society and the price they exact, unsettling our perception.

Selected exhibitions include Clumsy Seamless (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2025), Supper Club (H Queen’s, Hong Kong, 2025), Berserker (Museumhead, Seoul, 2024), NEURO HARD (CON_, Tokyo, 2024), Hysteria: Contemporary Realism Painting (Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023), Natural Born Odds (Salihara Arts Center, Jakarta, 2023), Beyond Human (Lupo, Milan, 2023), and Funky-Function (Daegu Museum of Art, Daegu, 2022), among others. She was a resident at Art Omi, New York, in 2025, and has received the Art Support Program grant from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture (2018, 2019, 2020, 2024).

About CON_

CON_ is a contemporary art gallery and creative production company founded in 2022 in Nihonbashi Bakurocho, Tokyo. Under the concept “TOKYO IN BETWEEN,” CON_ positions itself between contemporary art and other cultural industries, and between Tokyo and the international market, representing artists while producing creative projects across music, fashion, and media.

Venue
Booth F05, COEX, Seoul

Artists
Minhee Kim

Exhibition Dates
September 2 – 5, 2026

Website
https://www.contokyo.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/con_tokyo_

Contact
info@contokyo.com

(Text and images courtesy of CON_)

Our presentation reconsiders the cross-generational development of abstraction in Japan by examining the works by 3 artists. Their practices – from inquiries into the structural foundations, to the visualization of cognitive processes, and to reorganization of image as an environment – demonstrate how the possibilities of abstraction have continually expanded.

The Emergence of Structure: In the 70s and 80s, Toeko Tatsuno deepened her exploration ofconstructed surfaces. The underlying sense of discipline formed a reconsideration of framework. Withinthe structures, subtle fluctuations of color introduce a quiet psychological resonance, and it is thiscoexistence that defines her abstraction.

Visual Slippage: Toshiyuki Konishi inherits a structural mode of thinking while updating it for a post-digital environment. By revealing how vision is generated and destabilised through the discrepancy ofrepetition, he transforms abstraction into a “movement of cognition”.

Transgressing the Image: Takuro Tamayama extends abstraction into objects and architectural elementsthat engage the surrounding environment. Blurring the boundary between material and image, engagingthe viewer’s bodily perception, and redefines installation as an abstract space.

Venue
Booth A35, COEX, Seoul

Artists
Toeko Tatsuno, Toshiyuki Konishi, Takuro Tamayama

Exhibition Dates
September 2 – 5, 2026

Website
https://anomalytokyo.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/anomaly_tokyo/

Contact
info@anomalytokyo.com

(Text and images courtesy of ANOMALY)

Post-war Korean abstraction can be understood as a study of space, not as emptiness, but as a field shaped by memory, material, and silence. This presentation brings together the distinct yet deeply resonant practices of Yun Hyong-keun (1928-2007), Ham Sup (1942-2024),and Cho Sung-mook (1940-2016), forming a cross generational dialogue between painting,materiality, and sculpture. Anchored by major institutional recognition, including retrospectives and exhibitions at the MMCA, the presentation examines how space can embody both presence and absence.

The presentation opens with the restrained stillness of Yun Hyong-keun. Working with a reduced palette of umber and ultramarine, Yun allowed pigment to bleed into raw linen, creating monumental vertical forms that function like quiet thresholds within space. Their measured rhythm establishes a contemplative atmosphere that unfolds throughout the booth.

This meditative restraint finds a tactile counterpoint in Ham Sup’s mixed media works. Across decades of practice, Ham soaked, layered, and tore Hanji, building surfaces of sculptural density inspired by the structural rhythms of traditional Korean architecture.

Intersecting these painterly investigations is the sculptural language of Cho Sung-Mook. His seminal Messenger (chair) and Communication (glasses) series translate abstract human conditions into physical form, exploring connection, absence, and the traces left behind by human presence.

Together, the three artists construct a restrained yet deeply physical language of space, shaped through material tension, silence, and quiet human presence.

Venue
Booth C01, COEX, Seoul

Artists
Yun Hyong-Keun, Cho Sung-Mook, Ham Sup

Exhibition Dates
September 2 – 5, 2026

Website
https://galeriebhak.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/galeriebhak/

Contact
info@galeriebhak.com

(Text and images courtesy of BHAK)