Korean Art Market: Kiaf Seoul Art Fair Names 164 Exhibitors For 2022 Edition

As South Korea’s art market continues its ascent, Kiaf Seoul, the country’s longest-running art fair, has named the exhibitor for this year’s edition, which is set to receive greater international attention than past ones.

That is in part because Frieze Seoul will host its inaugural edition in the Korean capital this year, running concurrently with Kiaf, from September 3 to September 6, with a VIP preview on September 2. Both fairs will be held at the Coex convention center.

For its 2022 edition, Kiaf Seoul will bring together 164 galleries from around the world. The fair will be comparable in size to Kiaf’s last pre-pandemic edition in 2019, which boasted 175 galleries.

Kiaf Seoul’s participants include many of the country’s top galleries, many of which will also have booths in Frieze Seoul, including Kukje Gallery, Gallery Hyundai, PKM Gallery, Jason Haam, Arario Gallery, and Leeahn Gallery. Europe-based galleries participating in both fairs include Esther Schipper, Perrotin, Galleria Continua, and Axel Vervoordt.

This iteration of Kiaf Seoul will also see 37 first-time exhibitors, including Rachel Uffner Gallery, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Cristea Roberts Gallery, Anat Ebgi, Carvalho Park, and Ora-Ora.

The lion’s share of Kiaf Seoul’s exhibitor list, however, hail from South Korea, which has historically been the case for the fair since its founding in 2002 by the Galleries Association of Korea.

Frieze Seoul’s exhibitor list includes the world’s four largest galleries (David Zwirner, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and Pace), as well as other leading Western enterprises like Gladstone, Thaddaeus Ropac, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Commonwealth and Council, Sadie Coles HQ, Galerie Lelong & Co., and kamel mennour.

Kiaf will also launch a satellite fair, Kiaf Plus, that will take place at the SETEC convention center, about a 20-minute transit ride from Coex. That fair will focus on “ambitious and experimental presentations across diverse genres and practices including new media art and art NFTs that are less commonly presented at art fairs,” according to a release.

Kiaf Plus, which will host its VIP preview on September 1 and run September 2–5, has lined up 73 galleries, including Blank Space, Cylinder, Everyday Mooonday, Urban Spree Galerie, Gallery Banditrazos, and Gallery Chosun.

In a statement, Dal-Seung Hwang, the president of the Galleries Association of Korea, said, “With over two decades of history and experiences, Kiaf is in a unique position to showcase contemporary Korean art in unparalleled depth and breadth. At the same time, we’re proud to have evolved into a global gathering place for the art world, with our exhibitor list this year more international than ever.”