Colour and Ruins: 10 Solo Presentations at Frieze Seoul 2025

There are numerous solo presentations across all sections of Frieze Seoul 2025. They range from career-spanning retrospectives of historically important artists to brand new works and installations by emerging talents. They also reflect the scope of the fair, coming from all corners of Asia and the diaspora, as well as from around the world, and addressing the destructive impulse of late capitalism, queer identity, and cultural legacies of materials and techniques.  

Gu Xiaoping | Leo Gallery (C13)

Leo Gallery is presenting a new solo project by Chinese artist Gu Xiaoping called ‘Gracefully Futile’, which features works from two of his most recent series: ‘Ink Lines in Motion’ and ‘MODERACY’. Gu’s work spans Eastern and Western traditions. While his pieces might initially evoke US colour field paintings, he uses traditional Chinese ink-measuring tools to methodically create precise lines on rice paper or linen. The process has a zen spirituality in its repetition and daily act of line-making – an antidote to contemporary digital overload.

Lien Truong | Galerie Quynh (B21)

Another artist whose work reflects their crossing from East to West is Lien Truong, presented by Ho Chi Minh City’s Galerie Quynh. She fled Vietnam to the US as a child refugee in 1975, and her subsequent take on ‘Asian Futurism’ contains narratives of oppression, displacement and bodily change. She uses both Eastern and Western materials – including traditional painting techniques and antique Japanese fabrics – to address war and cultural identity, but also to create a delicate, ephemeral beauty.

Prapat Jiwarangsan | Sac Gallery (A14)

Thailand’s Prapat Jiwarangsan moved from ceramics and glassmaking to photography and film. Latterly incorporating digital and AI processes alongside collage and direct treatment of negatives, Jiwarangsan’s work looks at history, memory, politics and migration in Thailand, suggesting that both image and identity can be compromised and manipulated. Bangkok’s Sac Gallery will be showing his landmark series ‘The Portrait of Asian Families’ at Frieze Seoul.

Jadé Fadojutimi | Taka Ishii Gallery (A32)

Tokyo’s Taka Ishii Gallery is presenting work by London-born and -based painter Jadé Fadojutimi. Fadojutimi’s energetic canvases teeter on the brink of figuration – palimpsests of brushmarks and influences that include Japanese anime, soundtracks, video games, fashion and personal memories. This constant overlaying reflects her attempts to construct a sense of self and identity through her work. Still in her early thirties, Fadojutimi has already featured in both the Venice and Liverpool biennials, and her work is in the collections of the Tate in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Suejin Chung | Lee Eugean Gallery (C18)

Born in Korea and now based in New York, Suejin Chung came to prominence in the early 2000s. Her work features a psychic landscape populated by what she calls ‘Monsters’ – ‘These enigmatic presences have long been objects of curiosity and sources of obsession,’ she explains. ‘I have kept asking why they dwell in a land of disorder and chaos and what compels both the Monsters and their world to exist.’ This presentation by Seoul’s Lee Eugean Gallery might provide some answers.

Tseng Chien-ying | Kiang Malingue (A30)

Taiwanese artist Tseng Chien-ying is the subject of a solo presentation by Hong Kong gallery Kiang Malingue. Tseng’s work is a fascinating combination of traditional technique and contemporary queer sensibilities. He uses materials such as paper, inks and mineral pigments to investigate the edges of normal/abnormal, good/bad, beautiful/ugly. A subtly pioneering and subversive artist.

Maria Hassabi | The Breeder (A12)

Another artist who considers the distortion and manipulation of images is Cyprus-born Maria Hassabi, who will have a solo presentation from Athens gallery The Breeder.  Hassabi’s work spans photography, sculpture and performance, and often incorporates mirrors and reflective surfaces such as gold leaf. Her installations reference fairground sideshows and dance studios, suggesting that an inauthentic or inverted representation of the self might contain beauty and possibilities.

Im Sungoo | drawingRoom (F06)

Seoul locals drawingRoom gallery will be showing a solo presentation by Im Sungoo, who primarily uses paper and graphite along with salvaged materials such as wood, wire and concrete. Im’s work reflects a struggle to ‘fix’ memory, in the process creating new forms that hint at childhood nightmares, fairy tales and book illustrations. For Frieze Seoul, she is presenting an installation: The House in the Cabinet; Narrative under the Premise of Extinction, containing fragments from her grandmother’s demolished home. A slightly sinister, introverted delight.

Side Core | Parcel (F03)

Definitely not introverted – although definitely anonymous – Tokyo art collective Side Core is taking over Parcel’s stand. A sort of multi-headed Barry McGee, Side Core was formed in 2012 and makes site-specific work that reflects the urban spaces we inhabit and share, street art and culture, and unseen infrastructural elements such as sewers and waterways. The group’s presentation at Frieze Seoul includes ceramics, sculptures made from construction materials and paintings based on signage. 

Eugene Jung | sangheeut (F08)

Another artist taking their cues from the fabric of the built environment is Korea’s Eugene Jung. Her installations imagine future ruins, with the innards of the city and its society exposed, or smashed into new shapes and constructions. Jung is particularly enthralled by the idea of speculative fictions: how we all live amid the wreckage of our collective future. For a glimpse of the apocalypse, don’t miss her solo presentation on the stand of Seoul’s sangheeut gallery.

Further Information 

Frieze Seoul, COEX, 3 – 6 September 2025.

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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: Suejin Chung, Brain Ocean (detail), 2024. Oil on linen, 181 × 227 cm. Courtesy: Lee Eugean Gallery (Studionamu)}