Three South Korean artist solos to catch in Seoul before the end of 2026
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The exhibitions introduce South Korean artists to an international audience.
PHOTOS: JANG, LEEUM MUSEUM OF ART
- Three South Korean artists—Do Ho Suh, Park Seo-Bo, and Koo Jeong A—are showcasing major solo exhibitions in Seoul, coinciding with international art events like the Gwangju Biennale and Frieze Seoul.
- Do Ho Suh's exhibition features large-scale fabric and hanji recreations of his homes, including thread drawings made during a Singapore residency.
- Park Seo-Bo museum hosts a joint show with Vietnamese artist Huong Dodinh, highlighting his Dansaekhwa technique, while Koo Jeong A explores sensory experiences and spatial perception at Leeum Museum of Art.
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SEOUL – Three South Korean artists currently have excellent shows in Seoul, in line with the Korea Art Festival in September. The festival also includes the ongoing Gwangju Biennale, which is curated by Singapore artist Ho Tzu Nyen.
The shows introduce South Korean artists to an international audience drawn to the biennale and to major art fairs such as Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul. More than 70,000 people visited each of the fairs in 2026.
Do Ho Suh
Do Ho Suh’s Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul. Interior objects are colour-coded to denote which of his former homes they are from.
PHOTO: JANG
This survey at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, which has gained momentum on social media for its striking visuals, is simply unmissable.
Do Ho Suh uses handmade paper hanji and fabric from traditional clothing hanbok to recreate large-scale houses he has lived in, in meditations of what home means.
Do Ho Suh’s Rubbing/Loving: Seoul Home. He rubbed graphite over hanji over months to capture the textures on the exterior of his family home.
PHOTO: JANG
He layers hanji onto his traditional family home in Seoul, rubbing them with graphite, notwithstanding sun and rain over months, to capture the intricate textures of its exterior.
Visitors can walk through a fabric tunnel amalgamation of all the homes he has lived in, with interior appliances painstakingly recreated.
Many of Suh’s thread drawings are also being shown for the first time in South Korea, with colourful threads directly embedded into paper.
This whimsical but doubtless laborious method of illustration began with the help of STPI staff members during a residency in Singapore in 2009.
An example of Do Ho Suh’s thread drawings. He developed the technique in Singapore at STPI in 2009.
PHOTO: JANG
Info: str.sg/6EvL
Park Seo-bo
The newly opened Parkseobo Museum was the longstanding wish of famed artist Park, who died in 2023 before it came to fruition.
The gallery’s ongoing show is a two-artist exhibition juxtaposing the works of Park with those of Vietnamese artist Huong Dodinh. The two met just once, when Park was in his 80s. Despite needing two interpreters, they understood each other perfectly.
Park Seo-bo presses pencil into hanji to create ridges.
PHOTO: JANG
Park is widely considered a foundational figure of South Korea’s Dansaekhwa movement, where artists prioritised repetitive motions to create texture as a way of emptying themselves. Here, he presses pencil into hanji repeatedly until ridges appear, most obvious when viewed from an angle.
The exhibition builds up to three towering white canvases in the loft that Park created just for the space, most startling in the day with their surroundings mottled with sunlight.
The three white canvases in the loft are best seen in the day.
PHOTO: JANG
Huong’s works do not shy in comparison, either. Her practice is equally built on conscientiousness, as she creates her own pigment and builds dimension by repeatedly applying thin layers of colour.
Info: parkseobomuseum.org/exhibition
Koo Jeong A
At Leeum Museum of Art, Koo Jeong A, who represented South Korea at the 2024 Venice Biennale, has her largest solo exhibition in the country to date.
Her art often requires viewers to pay attention to their environment: for instance, 57 mechanical-pencil leads standing upright in a wall recess, or crystals hidden in a wall that will make their presence known only when the light strikes them just so.
Koo Jeong A’s Mobiousss is a steel commission for her largest solo in South Korea to date.
PHOTO: LEEUM MUSEUM OF ART
At Venice, her material was the invisible one of scent, when she filled the pavilion with scents people said reminded them of the Korean peninsula. She once more asks visitors to breathe in deeply.
Other interventions in the space are more dramatic, like Mobiousss, a steel commission in the lobby that can be discerned as an infinity symbol only when viewed from the floors above.
This is a whirligig clash of big and small.
Info: leeumhoam.org/leeum