Derrick Adams

Last August, when Gagosian revealed that it had tapped the veteran Seoul art dealer Jiyoung Lee to run its operations in South Korea, speculation mounted about the mega gallery’s plans. A bevy of blue-chip foreign dealers have set up branches in the country in recent years. Would Gagosian be next?

So far, the answer is no. However, as Frieze Seoul opens in early September, Gagosian will be presenting its first show in the capital city. Both the artist and location are high profile: the American artist Derrick Adams, who will be going solo in a 2,000-square-foot space on the ground floor of the striking, David Chipperfield-designed headquarters of the beauty conglomerate Amorepacific in the Yongsan district.

Adams has “never had an exhibition in Korea, and I think it was important for us to do something that was very fresh and perhaps unexpected,” Nick Simunovic, who’s led Gagosian’s Asian operations since 2007, said in a phone interview. “From our perspective, it’s a way of demonstrating respect for the local market, for the art community.”

The New York-based artist, who was born in 1970, has won a following for punchy depictions of Black life that he composes from flat planes of brilliant color. His latest paintings, which will be on view in Seoul, depict the front windows of beauty-supply stores in Brooklyn and abroad—a fitting subject for a building that also has a retail outlet stocked with Amorepacific brands like Innisfree and Sulwhasoo. Adams’s show is slated to open on September 3, the day before the VIP preview of Frieze Seoul’s third edition, and run through October 12.

While some Western dealers have staged pop-up group shows timed to Frieze Seoul in the past—there was a combined effort by Andrew Kreps Gallery, Bortolami Gallery, and Tina Kim Gallery, plus a David Kordansky Gallery appearance, in 2022, and Lisson Gallery last year—Gagosian’s prime real estate and one person approach sets its project apart.

“We are truly grateful that Gagosian is the first gallery to present an exhibition in the prestigious space,” the APMA Cabinet, Lee said in an email. In 2022, when she was working for the Berlin-based gallery Sprüth Magers, she helped organize an Andreas Gurksy survey at the Amorepacific Museum of Art, which is housed in the Chipperfield building’s basement.

Amorepacific’s CEO, Suh Kyung-bae, is one of Korea’s leading art collectors, and his firm’s museum has played host to exhibitions of work by an array of major Western artists recently, like Barbara Kruger (in 2019), Mary Corse (2021), and the late Lawrence Weiner (2023). The beauty giant’s tea brand, Osulloc, has cafes at the headquarters, as well as a delightful teahouse at the nearby Pace Gallery, the only one of the big four mega galleries with a branch in South Korea.

Will Gagosian join them? “We are always evaluating options, and every option is on the table,” Simunovic said. “On the other hand, I would say that we have always been extremely methodical, and deliberate, and careful about building out the physical footprint of the gallery.”

“These are heady days in the art world,” Simunovic said at another point. “But I am stalwart in my thinking and belief that Asia remains a hugely important geography, certainly for Gagosian. I think other galleries and the art world shift their focus or attention away from Asia at their peril.”