Five Emerging Artists to See at Frieze Seoul 2025
From gravity-defying rubble to paintings of memes, works by the art stars of tomorrow are in full effect at Frieze Seoul this year
From gravity-defying rubble to paintings of memes, works by the art stars of tomorrow are in full effect at Frieze Seoul this year
Spanning painting, installation, sculpture, photography, film and more, the next generation of artists is well represented at this year’s Frieze Seoul, with a strong showing of practitioners and galleries from Asia. Here are five stands to catch at the fair.
Taiki Yokote | CON_
Literally bringing the studio into the fair, Tokyo-based artist Yokote Taiki (b.1998) is presenting a new installation at Frieze Seoul, impressively titled Floating Rubble / Zen, Gure, Coco, Sen, Po, Ten, Kuki, Kurumi (when the cat’s away, the mice will play). The work is made of pieces of reinforced concrete salvaged from the walls and floors of his former student studio, suspended by magnets in mid-air. More than an act of nostalgia, the piece endows these lumps of physical memory as they float in space with a new-found animation. The piece is typical of Taiki, who uses sculpture, installation, video and photography to probe the narratives implicit in discarded or obsolete materials, charging them with fresh meaning.
Timoteus Anggawan Kusno | kohesi Initiatives
Indonesian artist Timoteus Anggawan Kusno (b.1989) has been exploring colonial issues and speculative histories for a decade, notably in his ‘Phantoms Trilogy’ films. At Frieze Seoul, he presents a new series of works about abandoned cinemas and imaginary films. The project engages with propaganda films, censorship and movies that were rumoured but never saw the light of day. In particular, Kusno is fascinated by the hand-painted posters (‘spandoek’) that once enticed audiences into the world of these films. These paintings were a uniquely coded visual language that shaped how films were anticipated, remembered and mythologized.
Liang Fu | Linseed
In the words of his gallery, ‘pervading Liang Fu’s works is an abysmal, eccentric quality shifting between nature, myths and the cosmos’. Currently working in Paris, Fu (b.1993) explores the physical, cultural and psychological dimensions of the diaspora experience. On Linseed’s stand at Frieze Seoul, he’s presenting ‘After Solaris’, highlighting his recent forays into sculpture and installation. Echoing Andrei Tarkovsky’s landmark existential 1972 space-travel movie Solaris, Fu’s installation features mechanical antiquities, glass, graphite and cosmic imagery, traversing loneliness and warmth, fear and hope, and the respective scale of the universe and the individual.
Christine Tien Wang | PTT Space
An avid sifter of the digital dustbowl, US-born painter Christine Tien Wang (b.1985) documents millennial anxieties, boom-bust crypto cycles and, above all, the insidious cultural tumbleweed of memes. Frieze Seoul 2025 sees her first solo fair presentation in Asia: ‘Christine Tien Wang: BDSM (Bitcoin Daddies Seek Memes)’, which continues Wang’s sardonic critique/celebration of late capitalism as evinced by the art market. There are paintings of news reports displayed on TV stands, walls painted green-screen green, and a ‘selection of tubular vegetables’ velcroed to the floor. Frankly, it sounds great.
Seungwon Yang | Gallery Planet
Seoul native Seungwon Yang (b.1984) emerged from photography with a practice that incorporates both flat and 3D works to question the idea of what the ‘image’ itself means: how its boundaries shift between the perceived and the perceiver, and how different iterations sustain parallel lives in the mind of the viewer. Yang’s UV prints of rippling water and other textures on crumpled aluminium sheets suggest that even materiality is – to some extent – in the eye of the beholder, so his stand at Frieze Seoul this year promises to be both disorientating and meditative.
Further Information
Frieze Seoul, COEX, 3 – 6 September 2025.
Discounted tickets are now sold out, limited full-price tickets available. Become a Frieze Member for premier access, multi-day entry, exclusive guided tours, and more.
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Frieze Seoul is supported by Headline Partner LG OLED, in a collaboration that merges the worlds of art and technology, and Global Lead Partner Deutsche Bank, continuing over two decades of shared commitment to artistic excellence.
Main image: Christine Tien Wang, Bitcoin Sign Guy, 2024. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 152 x 229 cm. Courtesy: the artist and PTT Space
