COEX Hall D
513 Yeongdong-daero, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea
As a leader in the fast-growing Korean art market, Lehmann Maupin participates in the inaugural edition of Frieze Seoul with a presentation of new and historical works that connect our activity in Korea—both in the gallery and nearby institutions—with our global program. Highlights in booth C17 include a brand new, large-scale painting by McArthur Binion, parallel to his current solo exhibition at our Seoul gallery; new works by celebrated Korean artists Do Ho Suh and Lee Bul; plus a new work in Augmented Reality (AR) by Erwin Wurm accessible via our CollectAR platform. Other highlights include gallery artists Heidi Bucher, Nari Ward, and Teresita Fernández, among others.
Lehmann Maupin’s presentation unites excerpts from these artist’s oeuvres around tangible material and conceptual tension. In their own way, each artist synthesizes seemingly opposing forces that explore the space between natural and fabricated, universal and personal, public and private, known and unknown, past and present. Each work embraces the healthy friction found in these liminal spaces, bringing nuance to the fore and unfolding onto new interpretations of the piece at hand.
Integral to our presentation is a brand-new, large-scale painting by McArthur Binion. The work belongs to Binion’s DNA series, which is on view nearby in the exhibition DNA:Study/(Visual:Ear) at our Seoul gallery in the Hannam-dong neighborhood. Also on view at Frieze is a historical, Circuit Landscape: No. IV (1973), which connects the artist’s past personal and artistic identities to the present moment. Marking Binion’s second solo exhibition in Korea, the works on view at the gallery and the fair continue the artist’s innovative exploration of abstraction and its unique capacity to both obscure and reveal aspects of identity.
In celebration of our deep-rooted connections to Korea and its artists, Lehmann Maupin will present new works by gallery artists Lee Bul and Do Ho Suh. Anchoring the booth is Do Ho Suh’s Hub-1, Kitchen Lobby, 185 Comptons Lane, Horsham, United Kingdom, (2020), a one-to-one scale reproduction of a kitchen lobby in the home of the artist's parents-in-law. artist’s Hub series—transitional spaces such as hallways, nooks, and corridors – to explore notions of home, memory, marginality and the correlation between psychic and physical space. Suh’s use of lightweight, translucent fabric also reflects on the porosity of traditional Korean architecture and the artist’s ideas about the transportability of space.
Nearby, Lee Bul’s Perdu series features sculptural paintings composed of organic and inorganic material, such as mother of pearl and layers of acrylic paint, calling into tension the aesthetically natural and fabricated. In this series, otherworldly visions of fragmented yet embodied figures are suspended in space at various distances and in differing detail, at once familiar and alien. Like Lee Bul’s Perdu works, Do Ho Suh’s Scaled Behaviour series explores notions of the uncanny; specifically, it extends Suh’s interest in the politics of touch. Through a complex process that involves robotics and 3D printing, Suh produced ScaledBehaviour_runOn(doorknob_6.22.1) (2022) based on an automated drawing made via script from an architectural modeling software. The result is a labyrinthine form that acknowledges its digital origins and its analogue production, collapsing distinctions between the virtual and the tactile. The work raises questions about control and authorship, and presents a subtle reframing of traditional ideas around the all-important ‘hand of the artist.’
Exploring a similar concept of home and belonging is Heidi Bucher’s Der Schrank (ca. 1979), a casting made of latex, cotton, and mother of pearl pigment. Bucher is known for her innovative use of latex to cast large-scale architectural features, including entire buildings. Bucher refers to these castings as “skinnings” or “moultings,” imbuing these captured spaces with animal or biological attributes. In Der Schrank, Bucher blurs the distinction between body and environment, constructing a home from flesh-like material. Metamorphosis II, a major traveling retrospective of Bucher’s work, is currently on view at Muzeum Susch through December 4th.
In conversation with Bucher’s analysis of body and medium is Ghost, a new work in Augmented Reality (AR) by Erwim Wurm, presented via our new platform CollectAR. Viewers will activate the work using a QR code at the booth and will subsequently be able to view the NFT in augmented reality in various locations across Seoul, including our gallery in the Hannam-dong neighborhood. Ahead of Wurm’s upcoming solo exhibition at our Seoul location next Spring, the booth will also feature two new marble sculptures, Doubt (Icons) and Sublime (Icons) (both 2021), that explore the tension between absurdity and the mundane in a conceptual, yet playful way.
In conjunction with her solo exhibition in London, Lehmann Maupin presents a selection of works by Teresita Fernández, who characterizes her artistic process through an interest in self-reflection and conceptual wayfinding. Her immersive works are inspired by a rethinking of landscape and place, as well as by diverse historical and cultural references. Often drawing inspiration from the natural world, Fernández’s practice unravels the intimacies between matter, places, and human beings. On view at the booth is Untitled (Anthem) (2008), a work that is meticulously constructed and evocative of organic forms, challenging longstanding ideas about landscape and human interference in the natural world.
Following Nari Ward’s solo exhibition in New York this past spring, we are presenting a brand new work from his acclaimed Breathing Panels series: copper works in which the artist applies darkening patina to the soles of his shoes, leaving a trace of his performative gesture on the surface. Here, Ward punctures geometric patterns into each panel, referencing traditional Congolese cosmograms, an ancient prayer symbol that represents the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth—as seen on Breathing Mosaic Dream-Air (2022).
Lehmann Maupin is proud to have been one of the first international galleries to establish a permanent space in Korea—our Seoul location launched in 2017 and expanded in 2022. Following the 2013 launch of our first Asian location in Hong Kong, the Korean expansion of our program solidifies Lehmann Maupin’s reputation as a pioneer among global galleries.