Frieze Seoul 2025

BEAK Jungki (b. 1981) delves profoundly into the essence of materials and specific subjects of interest are explored through deep research and scientific experimentation. His in-depth explorations are visualized through a hands-on-approach conducted personally by the artist. BEAK’s studio is like a scientist’s laboratory or a small version of a well-organized factory. He is an artist who demonstrates extraordinary creativeness by exploring the attitudes of humans towards nature, the environment of the past and the future, old culture of superstition, and today’s science and technology as well as philosophy. His scientific explorations on the relationship between human beings and nature, and the occurrence and flow of energy are put together to produce his own unique artistic creation, in works where candles wish for the birth of a baby chick, a generator that produces energy, an incubator the hatches the eggs and much more. Furthermore, his exploration on materials and experimentation can also be seen in his is of series. BEAK takes photographs of natural landscapes but prints images using pigments extracted from plants collected in those very locations. Unlike conventional photography, BEAK’s works incorporate actual elements of nature as direct materials, capturing the presence and uniqueness of ever-changing nature within the image.

BEAK received his BFA in Sculpture from Kookmin University in 2004 and his MFA in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art in 2008. He has held solo exhibitions at institutions including ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Whiling & Dealing (Seoul, Korea, 2021), OCI Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea, 2019), and Alternative Space Loop (Seoul, Korea, 2012). Since 2004, he has participated in exhibitions at major Korean art institutions such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Amorepacific Museum of Art, Ulsan Art Museum, Songeun, Leeum Museum of Art, Nam June Paik Art Center, Posco Museum of Art, Daegu Art Museum, and Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art. Internationally, BEAK has also been active in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, Venezuela, Israel, China, Singapore, and Hong Kong. BEAK has received the Songeun Art Award (2012), the Kim Sejoong Young Sculptor Award (2019), and the IFVA Gold Award for Media Art from the Hong Kong Arts Centre (2023). BEAK’s works are part of major collections such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Ulsan Art Museum, OCI Museum of Art, and Songeun in Korea.

KIM Inbai(b. 1978)'s works are characterized by the form of asking questions from a new perspective and suggesting a different sensory experience, which confronting the socially formed cognitive biases of humans and the limitations of acquiring spatiotemporal cognition by educating. In most cases, he creates sculptures by transforming the human body, and at which time the body is completely dehumanized and presented as a formative mass itself. From a large statue that signified a dignity of an authority; a clod that express a rounded sense of volume without detailed expression of eyes, nose, and mouth; and the rhythm of the body that contained by a wire across the space, the objects he creates are always dismissed or omitted, but it always implies a clue to visualize the whole imagery. Resemblance of human body, KIM Inbai’s sculpture series imply a social and cultural context or sometimes act as an abstract instrument by maximizing the basic elements of sculpture such as dot, line, volume, and texture. Through these processes, his sculpture becomes a point of contact with the external side, and at the same time it occupies a special point of constant transformation in the inner part, and which make their viewer to face a strange situation that is bordered by familiar but unfamiliar and conscious but unconscious. 

KIM Inbai received his BFA in 2003 and MFA in 2009, majoring in sculpture at Hongik University, Seoul, Korea. He has held solo exhibitions at Primary Practice (Seoul, Korea, 2024), Perigee Gallery (Seoul, Korea, 2020), ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI (Shanghai, China, 2019), ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2014; 2007), ARARIO GALLERY CHEONAN (Cheonan, Korea, 2011), DOOSAN Gallery (New York, US, 2010) and Gallery Skape (Seoul, Korea, 2006). In addition, he has participated in group exhibition at ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI (Shanghai, China, 2025),  ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2023; 2021; 2018), Daegu Art Museum (Daegu, Korea, 2022; 2018), Songeun (Seoul, Korea, 2021), Bern Kunstmuseum(2021, Bern, Switzerland), DOOSAN Gallery (Seoul, Korea, 2019), Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea, 2019), Seoul Olympic Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea, 2016), Sungkok Art Museum (Seoul, Korea, 2015), Asia Culture Center (Gwangju, Korea, 2015), Arario Museum DONGMUN MOTEL II (Jeju, Korea, 2015), Amore Pacific Museum of Art (Jeju, Korea, 2014), Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (Ansan, Korea, 2011), MAD (NY, US, 2011), Saatchi Gallery(London, UK, 2009) and more. He has been selected for the 35th Kim Se-Choong Youth Sculpture Award in 2024.

KOO Jiyoon’s (b.1982) works embody the time that passes in the city, depicting the condensed psychological landscape, which reflects on the ever-changing characteristics of urban chronology. The artist identifies the city and its buildings as biological organisms belonging to the structural concept of time. The artist, who observes and personifies the crumbling old buildings in and around Seoul, realizes the tragic fate of these buildings that will one day remain only as a distant memory, disappearing in the brutal order of the city, maintained by the constant cycle of destruction and creation. Therefore, the constant change of emotions, which mirrors the fluctuating characteristics of the city, are at the heart of KOO Jiyoon’s work. The artist captures the city’s desires and memories while reflecting on time and combines them into a psychological landscape where visual elements, such as colors and lines, mingle within the boundaries of the canvas. In particular, the unique and subtle aesthetic of KOO Jiyoon’s works arises from the coexistence of contrast between the new and the old, between the brushstrokes that are sharp and rough in places and thick and soft in others, and between the mixture of cloudy and vivid colors, providing yet another focal point in the abstract paintings.

KOO Jiyoon was born in Daegu, Korea, in 1982. She received her BFA in Fine Art from Korea National University of Arts in 2006 and from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, and earned her MFA in Studio Art from New York University in 2010. She has held solo exhibitions at ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2025; 2021), Gallery Purple (Namyangju, Korea, 2022), ARARIO MUSEUM in SPACE (Seoul, Korea, 2018), Project Space Sarubia (Seoul, Korea, 2016) and more. She has participated in group exhibitions at Mimesis Art Museum (Paju, Korea, 2024), New Spring Project (Seoul, Korea, 2024), ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2024; 2021), ARARIO GALLERY CHEONAN (Cheonan, Korea, 2021; 2020), Doosan Gallery Seoul (Seoul, Korea, 2019; 2014), Soda Museum, Hwaseong (Korea, 2019), Hite Collection (Seoul, Korea, 2018), Zaha Museum (Seoul, Korea, 2018; 2015), Doosan Gallery New York (New York, US, 2010) and more. Her works are collected by ARARIO MUSEUM, Bank of Korea.

Yohan HÀN (b. 1983) explores intuitive forms of sensation mediated through the body and action, working across sculptural objects, performance, and media installations. HÀN’s practice forges connections between elements rooted in primitive rituals and indigenous belief systems and the sensory experiences shaped by today’s digital media environment. He examines how digital technologies alter our perception of the body, while interrogating the endurance of “physical sensation” in an era where “physical presence is increasingly elusive.” His work centers on the concepts of resonance and sensation, exploring how modes of communication between material bodies are transformed within the digital environment. One of the key elements in HÀN’s work is the drum, crafted from animal hide. It serves not only as a percussive instrument but also as an instrumental object used in shamanistic rituals across various indigenous cultures. The drum has been regarded as a symbolic instrument that mediates between the visible and invisible realms, as well as the corporeal and the spiritual. It enables communal resonance and ritual communication. Drawing from diverse drum-making traditions, HÀN integrates these techniques into his creative process, using performance to reactivate forgotten gestures and to engage audiences through tactile, embodied interaction. For HÀN, skin is not merely the body’s surface but a sensory threshold—an interface between the inner self and the external world. Through its constant processes of transformation and shedding, the skin becomes a symbol of the body’s ever-shifting boundary. Touch, mediated through the skin, acts as a conduit for sensory experience, allowing people and objects to encounter each other on a deeper, more intimate level. By stitching skin and layering its textures, HÀN evokes physical connection and sensory awakening, inviting viewers into a space of shared vulnerability and embodied empathy. 

Yohan HÀN was born in 1983 in Trappes, France, and is currently based in Seoul, Korea. He received his Master’s degree in Department of Arts from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2016 and earned the National Diploma from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy in 2019. He has held solo exhibitions at venues including ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2025), Soorim Cube (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Parliament Gallery (Paris, France, 2022), and Gallery Chosun (Seoul, Korea, 2019). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects at institutions such as the Cheongju Museum of Art (Cheongju, Korea, 2025; 2020), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Gwacheon, Korea, 2021), Kumho Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea, 2021), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France, 2017), Espace des arts sans frontières (Paris, France, 2015; 2014), and Espace Pierre Cardin (Paris, France, 2014). His residency experience includes the MMCA Goyang Residency, Art Space Geumcheon, Cheongju Art Studio, La Générale (Paris), and the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris). His works are included in collections such as the Cheongju Museum of Art.

OK Seungcheol (b. 1988) explores concepts that arise between originality and authenticity, as well as between digital imagery and physical materiality. Drawing from endlessly reproduced and altered digital images sourced from visual media such as comics, films, and video games, he treats these as a kind of "original" from which new works are generated. His practice traverses traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture, as well as the boundaries between reality and virtuality, through acts of output and reproduction. OK is particularly interested in the irony that emerges from the intersection of the “lightness” of digital images—infinitely reproducible—and the “weight” of artworks that assert their uniqueness. For OK, painting is not a tradition to be restored, but a point of departure—an “original image” that can be adapted in scale and purpose depending on curatorial context and exhibition space, and extended into three-dimensional objects. His process begins with vector coordinates inside a computer program, and through traditional mediums such as canvas and paint, he translates these controllable, digital coordinates into tangible reality. His works go beyond mere shifts in perspective; they aim to reconfigure the essence of an image in subtle ways—akin to the logic of a video game’s character creation tool, where slight changes in hair color or skin tone generate visually similar yet distinct figures. Digital images, degraded to the point where any sense of an original has been lost, are reassembled and reinterpreted within the figurative framework of a character’s face. In OK’s work, such concepts are visualized in the digital realm and subsequently materialized through his hand across various surfaces and substances.

OK Seungcheol was born in Seoul in 1988 and earned his BFA in Western Painting from Chung-Ang University in 2013. He has held solo exhibitions at venues including Parco Museum Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan, 2024), Tuesday to Friday (Valencia, Spain, 2024) and Art Sonje Center (Seoul, Korea, 2022). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at institutions such as Busan Museum of Contemporary Art (Busan, Korea, 2024), Schema Art Museum (Cheongju, Korea, 2023), DMZ Paju (Paju, Korea, 2023), K11 (Shanghai, China, 2023), Daejeon Museum of Art (Daejeon, Korea, 2021), Daegu Art Museum (Daegu, Korea, 2019), and Platform L Contemporary Art Center (Seoul, Korea, 2019).

Buen CALUBAYAN (b.1980) investigates the mechanisms of world-making and the techniques of perception—of what happens in-between the self and the world in terms of mediation, image-making, and the production of devices that enable such operations. In art history through landscape painting, picturing of nature and of the world around us is skillfully employed with the renaissance technique of linear perspective. He took as an entry point this diagrammatic approach in reading 19^th century colonial paintings in the Philippines to plot the coordinates of a specific regional context within what was becoming the broader art world. The method involves the rethinking of the notions of the horizon, the vanishing point, and grounding as well as the mechanisms that make it visible such as framing, archiving historiography, and accessibility.

Based in Manila, Philippines, Buen CALUBAYAN majored in Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Santo Tomas. He worked as a preservation assistant at UST Museum of Arts and Sciences from 2002 to 2006, then at the National Museum of the Philippines from 2010 to 2013. Meanwhile, from 2008 to 2018, he took part in a number of residency programs in Australia, Japan, and Singapore. He has held 12 solo exhibitions since 2007 and has exhibited his work in numerous group exhibitions at various institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (Manila, Philippines); Gwangju Museum of Art (Gwangju, Korea); and Arario Gallery Shanghai (Shanghai, China).