If there is a city that can lay claim to the greatest number of art openings per square mile, it’s Seoul. On a single evening during a recent trip, I managed to attend three such events, all on the same floor in the same building. At Gallery 2, a thirtysomething crowd sipped oversize bottles of Australian beer and took in the latest exhibition by the Korean Pop artist Lee Dongi, who breezed through the crowd drinking a chocolate-flavored vodka cooler. Next door, at Michael Schultz Gallery, was “Façade,” a collection by abstract photographer Roland Fischer. And down the hall Gym Project was showing “The Strange World of Dorothy,” which consisted of garden gnome–like statues of a fat, homely girl sharing a picnic with a cat on a gingham tablecloth. At $2,500, the works were a bargain compared with the vibrant Lee paintings, which reference Disney and Japanese anime and go for as much as $20,000.
The galleries are situated in the sprawl of concrete and glass called Gangnam-gu, on the third floor of Nature Poem, an ultramodern low-rise designed by Mass Studies, the firm behind the Korea Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. It opened three years ago, and at last count, 18 galleries called Nature Poem home, making it the art-world equivalent of a mini mall. On the north side of the Han River, another gallery scene is clustered in Sogyeok-dong, a neighborhood that many Koreans insist is even trendier than Gangnam. There, Artsonje Center was hosting a multimedia show, “The Educated Objects,” by artist Kim Beom, featuring a 12-hour video of a rock being taught Korean poetry. Nearby, Arario Seoul exhibited portraits inspired by newspaper personal ads: “Hi Sugar, I have soft luscious lips and the voice of an angel, but when your [sic] looking into my baby blue eyes, and see my 36C-24-36, 5’5 and baby doll face it will be love at first sight so call me at 610-444-9774.” The drawing next to it showed a haggard woman with long hair and big breasts in a bikini, and the effect was simultaneously funny, sad, mundane, depressing, and arrestingly, affectingly intimate.
The art scene is not Seoul’s only scene. Fashion is also playing a part in the city’s resurgence. Comme des Garçons just opened a massive seven-floor flagship. Two years ago, 10 Corso Como, the art-concept store in Milan, debuted a branch in Seoul. (Its only other location is in Tokyo.) And every week or so, an up-and-coming local designer opens a boutique. Indeed, the Korean flowering of talent brings to mind the Japanese wave of the Eighties, when Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, and Yohji Yamamoto revolutionized the fashion world. While there hasn’t been a breakout star of that caliber, designers Juun J., Park Choon Moo, Soonjin Park, and Choi Bum Suk (the creative force behind men’s wear brand General Idea) have already infiltrated New York and Paris.
