Vera Mey’s Five Favourite Works from Frieze Seoul Viewing Room

Cheikh Ndiaye, Apollo, 2024 

Oil on canvas, 155 x 108 cm. Presented by Jason Haam Gallery

Prague-based Senegalese artist Cheikh Ndiaye has a keen interest in the intersection between architecture and urbanism which resonate through often haunting paintings of the traces of African independence movements. In Apollo, it appears that the artist is referring to the vestiges of old movie theatres in the African post-colony with an eerie sense of futurist promise.  

Rieko Otake, Of the Night, 2024 

Japanese white-bark magnolia wood, 42.5 x 69 x 20 cm. Prsented by Tomio Koyama Gallery

Reiko Otake works with natural materials and Japanese species of wood. It can be reassuring to see such humble and vulnerable materials depicting a human emotion, even though she calls these figures ‘humanlike’, they are also affectionately otherworldly. Her sculptures are wonderfully crafted and left with chisel marks.  

Hyun Bhin Kwon, Mulu2224, 2024 

Limestone and ink, 22 x 24 x 3 cm. Presented by Whistle

Hyun Bhin Kwon’s works are laboriously made through a process of grinding down limestone by hand; they choreograph the viewer to notice shifts in light and surface. Stones are fascinating materials for the ways they invoke the idea of the oldest possible material and memory.  

Morag Keil, Eye I and II, 2023 

Acrylic and varnish on canvas, diptych, each 41 x 102 x 2 cm. Presented by Project Native Informant

Morag Keil’s alluring paintings have been described as ‘self-referring’, which is a particularly pertinent rumination in this current age of screen overload and social media. There’s a rudimentary approach in looking at lenses and images gleaned from contemporary life, revealing an archaeology of dysfunctional tech.   

Aki Sasamoto, Do Nut Diagram, 2018 

Single-channel video, sound, 0:20:01. Presented by Take Ninagawa

Aki Sasamoto’s work often includes performance and considered yet improvisational movement. A levitating doughnut floating in the forest?! There’s also a lot of humour in the work! In this instance, it seems like she’s playing with the ambiguity of the screen as a window to the world. 

About Dr Vera Mey

Vera Mey is based in London and is co-artistic director of the Busan Biennale 2024. Titled ‘Seeing in the Dark’, it is built on a framework looking at the contradictory and complementary ends of both ‘Pirate Enlightenment’ and ‘Buddhist Enlightenment’. She has worked as a curator on the founding team of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore as well as worked independently including on the curatorial team of ‘SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia, 1980s to Now’ at the Mori Art Museum and National Art Centre Tokyo (2017), the largest survey of Southeast Asian contemporary art to be exhibited. She is currently a lecturer in the department of Art History at the University of York and international programme manager at Te Tuhi, in Aotearoa New Zealand.  

About Frieze Viewing Room  

Open to all from 28 August to 13 September 2024, Frieze Viewing Room is the online catalogue for the fair, giving global audiences access to gallery presentations coming to Frieze Seoul 2024. Visitors can search artworks by artist, price, date and medium, save favourite artworks and presentations, chat with galleries and much more.  

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Further Information 

Frieze Seoul is at COEX, 4 – 7 September 2024. 

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^{Main image: Morag Keil, Eye I and II, 2023. Diptych, acrylic and varnish on canvas, 41 x 102 x 2 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Project Native Informant}