This year’s Focus section at Frieze Seoul is expanding. Over the past four years, it has been Focus Asia, spotlighting innovative voices from the continent. Though Asia-based galleries still comprise the majority of the selected stands in Focus, this wider global framework encompasses emerging galleries from beyond Asia, including spaces from Budapest (Longtermhandstand), Stockholm (Coulisse Gallery), Rome (Matèria) and São Paulo (Yehudi Hollander-Pappi), among others.
One consistent thread of this year’s Focus section, which is curated by Seolhui Lee, is contemporary interpretations of ritual, belief and religion. To take one example, Turin-based Mongolian artist Bekhbaatar Enkhtur’s solo presentation with Matèria features new beeswax lotus sculptures and drawings on sandpaper that reflect his ongoing exploration of Central Asian mythic iconographies. An anchoring reference in this body of work is Enkhtur’s memories of the domestic altar, where objects appear animated by invisible forces, as a site of exchange. Such recollections directly inform his drawing practice, in which repetitive gestures of marking and erasing on sandpaper generate ghostly images that seem to arise from within the surface.
Other artists in this year’s Focus section approach these questions from a more cosmic angle: Brazilian artist Ayla Tavares, showing with London-based LAMB, explores the symbol of the sun through an installation of a lantern sculpture surrounded by ceramics. Coinciding with her participation in the Brazilian pavilion at this year’s Gwangju Biennale, this presentation draws influence from George Bataille’s 1927 text “The Solar Anus” to flesh out celestial relations between body, matter and ritual.
