When Frieze alights in Seoul this month for the first time, the hip international art fair's imprimatur will officially anoint the buzzy Asian city as the next great global art center.
But the cognoscenti have been onto Seoul for a while. Gallery Hyundai, the country's oldest contemporary-art specialist, has been operating since 1970, while South Korea's own Gwangju Biennale has risen above other upstart festivals since its 1995 debut. Western galleries, including Lehmann Maupin, Perrotin and Pace, began opening in Seoul five or six years ago, but in the lead-up to Frieze's debut, the scene has exploded: Thaddaeus Ropac, Gladstone and König all moved in over the
