Although the heat outside is at its peak, the art world's clock is already turning toward autumn. If Damien Hirst's solo exhibition and the Yoo Youngkuk retrospective led the scene in the first half of the year, the second half will see major shows by Korean and international artists who have expanded the boundaries of contemporary art, clustered around September when the marquee art fairs Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul take place.

From Do Ho Suh and Koo Jeong A to Georg Baselitz and Sol LeWitt

At the Seoul branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, translucent houses made of vividly colored fabric will take shape. Opening on the 27th, the solo exhibition of internationally renowned installation artist Do Ho Suh offers a wide-ranging look at roughly 30 years of practice, from early works and major pieces to projects now in progress. Suh has explored questions of space, memory, and identity around the themes of migration and dwelling, the individual and the community. He is widely known for life-size reconstructions of homes and passageways he lived in, rendered in translucent fabric. This exhibition will present, for the first time in Korea, a large body of drawings that capture the artist's thinking process. Key works will also be on view, including the Bridge Project, which has sought possibilities for new ways of living across boundaries. Viewers can trace how an identity formed across different cultures and places has expanded into space and memory in his work. At the Gwacheon branch, beginning in November, an exhibition centered on Georgia O'Keeffe (1887~1986) and American modern art will open; O'Keeffe is famed for paintings that enlarge flowers to fill the canvas.

Leeum Museum of Art will present Koo Jeong A's solo exhibition Koo Jeong A: Usmos starting September 5. Koo has probed flows of energy that are invisible yet present, like magnetism and scent, unsettling perception and the senses. In this show as well, the works permeate the museum beyond the galleries, seeping into the lobby, behind walls, and among antiquities.

At the Sehwa Museum of Art, the first exhibition in Korea since the death of Georg Baselitz (1938~2026), a master of German Neo-Expressionism who passed away in April, opens on the 13th. Upside-down figures, fragmented bodies, and twisted, scattered forms emerge through rough brushwork. The show moves from early works of the 1960s to 1980s to portraits of his lifelong partner Elke, the Remix series that reinterpreted past motifs from the 2000s onward, and the late Gold Painting works. Forty-six paintings, sculptures, and drawings survey an artistic world spanning more than six decades.

The Amorepacific Museum of Art will hold Sol LeWitt: Open Structure, the first large-scale solo exhibition in Korea of the pioneer of Conceptual art, starting September 1. It introduces the artist's wall drawings, geometric sculptures, paintings, and drawings, reflecting his emphasis on the ideas and rules underlying a work over its physical form.

The Seoul Museum of Art in October will present Lynn Hershman Leeson: My [Me]s, a look back at more than 60 years of work by the veteran American media artist and filmmaker, while the Busan Museum of Art, reopening in September, will stage its first international exhibition, Future Museology.

Kiaf and Frieze, plus the Gwangju and Busan Biennales

The art market's heat will reach its peak in early September. The highlights are Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul, international art fairs that open side by side at COEX in Seoul on September 2. Now in its fifth edition, Frieze will feature more than 125 galleries from 30 countries exhibiting and selling art. World-renowned galleries such as Esther Schipper, Gladstone, Lehmann Maupin, Thaddaeus Ropac, and White Cube will be joined by leading Korean galleries including Kukje Gallery and Gallery Hyundai to unveil major works by their artists. Kiaf, the country's largest art fair organized by the Korea Gallery Association, will run in tandem, with 175 galleries from 18 countries presenting works across diverse genres.

As many overseas collectors and art-world figures converge on Seoul, museums and galleries also stage their most meticulously prepared shows of the year to coincide with this period. Moving between the fairs and the city's museums and galleries, visitors can encounter a wide spectrum of contemporary art. The fairs' fervor continues at biennales across the country. The 16th Gwangju Biennale, under the theme You Must Change Your Life, opens on September 5. Artistic director Ho Chu-nien, together with curators Park Ga-hee, Brian Kuan Wood, and Choi Kyung-hwa, has invited 43 artists (teams) from 22 countries. Artists representing voices across generations and regions explore, from multiple perspectives, the conflicts and difficulties experienced by individuals and communities.

The 2026 Busan Biennale, with 46 artists and teams (49 individuals) from 22 countries, opens on the 29th under the theme Dissonant Chorus. Exhibition directors Evelyn Simons and Amal Khalaf focus on difference, tension, and the potential for resonance as they seek ways of being together. The Jeju Biennale opens on the 25th, the Gyeonggi Ceramic Biennale on September 18, and the Changwon Sculpture Biennale on September 30.