ARARIO GALLERY will participate in Frieze Seoul 2026, presenting twelve artists whose practices reflect the layered histories, memories and material experiments shaping contemporary Asian art.
The gallery will show works at Booth A28 during the fair, which takes place from September 2 to 5, 2026, at COEX Hall C&D in Seoul. Its presentation brings together artists across generations and media, including GWON Osang, Leslie de CHAVEZ, PARK Youngsook, PARK Wunggyu, AOKIZY, Yohan HÀN, Yuki SAEGUSA, LEE Seung Ae, LEE Jinju, CHOI Byungso, Kohei NAWA and Kohei YAMADA.
Rather than focusing on a single medium or generation, the booth is structured around several intersecting concerns: history, subjectivity, social critique, psychological memory and the transformation of artistic materials.
A central part of the presentation examines how artists respond to social structures and historical conditions. PARK Youngsook, a pioneering figure in Korean photography and feminist art, documented Korean society and women’s lived experiences through photography. Her work brings questions of gender, identity and social memory into the visual field. Leslie de CHAVEZ, based in the Philippines, draws from colonial history, Catholic imagery and political corruption to construct layered narratives on power, dignity and resistance.
The booth also includes artists who turn inward, using painting and drawing to explore memory, unease and symbolic imagery. LEE Jinju creates emotionally charged worlds shaped by fractured memories and psychological wounds. PARK Wunggyu draws from East Asian painting and Buddhist visual sensibilities to examine impurity, uncertainty and imperfection. LEE Seung Ae expands drawing into video and animation, allowing organic forms and enigmatic images to move across media.
Materiality is another major axis of the presentation. CHOI Byungso, a key figure in Korean contemporary art, transforms newspaper through the repeated act of erasing printed text with ballpoint pen and pencil. His accumulated gestures remove language and information while turning the surface into a field of time, labor and material presence.
The presentation also moves between digital culture, sculpture and spatial perception. GWON Osang expands the definition of sculpture by turning two-dimensional photographs into three-dimensional photographic sculptures. Kohei NAWA presents works that explore changing perceptions of surface, light and reality. AOKIZY translates digital images into physical forms, raising questions about originality and reproducibility. Kohei YAMADA builds layered fields of color that move between urban environments, nature and abstraction.
Through these twelve artists, ARARIO GALLERY’s Frieze Seoul 2026 booth offers a broad view of contemporary Asian art not as a single regional style, but as a field of distinct voices. The presentation shows how artists across Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia are working through history, memory, media and material with sharply individual approaches.
At a fair where galleries are often read through market visibility, ARARIO GALLERY’s booth points instead to a more complex question: how Asian contemporary art can be seen not only as a regional category, but as a set of independent artistic languages shaped by different histories, bodies, images and materials.
[Sayart = Maria Kim]
sayart2022@gmail.com
