SEOUL.- Pace announced its representation of the Lawrence Weiner estate in Asia, with a focus on Korea; its booth highlights for the 2023 edition of Frieze Seoul, where the gallery will debut its first presentation of work by the late artist; and concurrent exhibitions in the Korean capital. Concurrent with Frieze Seoul, a major survey dedicated to Weiner will be on view at the city’s Amorepacific Museum of Art. In May 2024, Pace will mount its first exhibition of Weiner’s work at its Seoul gallery.

Known for his flexible, generous praxis that centers on communication and defies definition or categorization by conventional means or method, Lawrence Weiner was a major figure in the international Conceptual art movement. He proposed a radical new mode of creating that centered on questions of objecthood as it relates to both the maker and receiver, and his open-ended works rely upon exchange and communion with the viewer, inviting unique readings and interpretations. Describing his medium as “language + the materials referred to,” the artist made use of words, syntax, and typography as subjects unto themselves, presenting his pieces in carefully arranged compositions and orientations—frequently accompanied by graphic elements rendered in his signature style—that inform their meaning.

Highlights from Frieze Seoul 2023 Booth

· A new Bodyscape drawings by Lee Kun-Yong, whose work will be on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this fall as part of the group presentation Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s

· Two new paintings—Searching (2023) and DEATH, DEATH, DEATH (2023)—by Yoshitomo Nara

· Chariot Armor (2023), a new painting by Robert Nava, who populates his compositions with real and imagined creatures, landscapes, and objects

· A vibrant, large-scale painting created this year by Marina Perez Simão

· Julian Schnabel’s Trees of Home (for Peter Beard) 4 (2020), a recent work from the artist’s body of plate paintings that eschew traditional canvas in favor of a sculptural surface composed of broken crockery

· Two new sculptures by Joel Shapiro, who has maintained a deep interest in exploring—and occasionally erasing—the line between abstraction and figuration

· A group of recent cyanotype prints exploring the phenomenological qualities of light by Kiki Smith

On View at Pace Gallery in Seoul

Concurrent with Frieze Seoul, exhibitions dedicated to Yoshitomo Nara, Robert Nava, and David Byrne will be on view at its arts complex in the Korean capital.

Yoshitomo Nara: Ceramic Works

Some 140 ceramics and 30 drawings on paper and cardboard by Nara will be presented together in a unique installation that captures the essence of his ideas, feelings, and creative impulses. The ceramics—many of which Nara created in the past three years as part of an ongoing residency in Shigaraki, Japan, where one of the country’s six ancient kilns is located—will be exhibited within cabinets and atop custom wooden tables and shelves owned by the artist.

Robert Nava: Tornado Rose

Nava’s exhibition, which will mark his first solo show in Asia, will spotlight six paintings created this year. In his new works, the artist returns to some of the most recognizable motifs in his visual lexicon—the shark, the ghost, and the bunny rabbit—while intensifying the density of his painted surfaces and further developing the narrative quality of the paintings. A press release with more information is linked here.

David Byrne

In the gallery’s on-site Osulloc tea house, a focused presentation of works on paper by Byrne—a musician and artist who co-founded the band Talking Heads and is currently presenting his new musical Here Lies Love on Broadway—will be on view. His upcoming show in Seoul will include recent works from his ongoing dingbats series, which he began producing under quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a selection of his drawings from the early 2000s.

Pace Gallery / Frieze Seoul
Lawrence Weiner estate
September 6th - 9th, 2023