White Cube joins march to Seoul

The march of western galleries into Seoul goes on, with White Cube the next to open in the South Korean capital this autumn. Gallery founder Jay Jopling says he is “proud to extend our programme to Seoul”, 30 years after he opened the leading London gallery. “The inaugural edition of Frieze Seoul in 2022 was testament to the region’s growing importance in the global art market,” Jopling says. The ground-floor, 3,230 sq ft space is in the lively Gangnam-gu neighbourhood, south of the Han River.

Meanwhile, Thaddaeus Ropac, who opened in Seoul in 2021, is expanding his exhibition space in the Hannam-dong district north of the river, where Lehmann Maupin and Pace galleries also have outposts. Timed to open just before Frieze Seoul (September 6-9), Ropac’s new space will show drawings by Joseph Beuys, while the original gallery space will host paintings and three-dimensional works by Donald Judd. The exhibition will be Judd’s first solo show for nearly 10 years in Seoul, Ropac says, and will be organised by the artist’s son, Flavin Judd, artistic director of the Judd Foundation.

The latest news from the Tefaf art fair — that its shortlived global managing director, Bart Drenth, has “stepped down” after reportedly posting provocative political and anti-“woke” opinions on Twitter — comes after a string of mishaps and miscalculations. In March 2020, the fair ran its 33rd edition in Maastricht, and was forced to close when the Covid virus spread to the event. Then, in its postponed fair in June 2022, a dramatic robbery at a jewellery stand temporarily evacuated the fair and remains unresolved. This all followed legal wrangles over the management of its two New York fairs between the Dutch organisers and the founders of the American events.

A spokesperson for the group says: “It is fair to say that Tefaf has endured some challenges over the last few years, which we have risen to and overcome under difficult circumstances. We have an exceptional team in place that delivered the Tefaf Maastricht and New York editions [in March and May] and, with our exhibitor community, our focus is firmly on the future.” Drenth declined to comment beyond Tefaf’s statement except to say it was “a pleasure and privilege” to work for Tefaf.

Arnold Lehman, the celebrated director of the Brooklyn Museum between 1997 and 2015 and then a senior adviser at Phillips, is retiring from the auction house with a weighty parting exhibition. He has co-organised a New York selling show called Innovation in American Art / 1970-1975 / A Fifty Year Perspective (June 29-August 9), which groups 35 artists whose work featured in prestigious invitational shows of that period, including the Venice Biennale and New York’s Whitney Biennial.

Lehman describes it as “a bridge to a less explosive political and social time” in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. He says he has known every artist on show in some capacity and notes that they incorporate those who are “less known today but still very important to art history” — such as Harvey Quaytman and Dorothea Rockburne — and those who went on to international stardom, including Jim Dine, Jennifer Bartlett and Brice Marden. Prices have a broad range too, from $25,000 to $900,000.

The African contemporary art gallery Tiwani Contemporary is the next to commit to a space on London’s Cork Street, joining incomers Alison Jacques and Stephen Friedman this autumn, to coincide with the Frieze fairs (October 11-15). The Pollen Estate, which tripled the available space on Cork Street in its reinvigoration plans in 2016, says that there will be 14 galleries on the 130-metre road by October.

Tiwani’s founder, Maria Varnava, has taken on a two-floor 1,400 sq ft space at 24 Cork Street, and opens with a show of new painting by the British-Nigerian artist Joy Labinjo. “I’m taking a calculated risk, given the [relatively low] price points of our artists. But it shows that we are still very committed to the artists we want to champion,” she says. Varnava also opened a space in Lagos last year.

The forthcoming inaugural Tokyo Gendai fair (July 7-9) confirms it has 74 exhibitors for its launch and that it has secured bonded status for the event, following recent revisions to Japan’s Customs Act. Without a bonded area, overseas galleries would pay a 10 per cent deposit on the value of their works. “It’s a real coup to cancel out the friction of upfront payments,” says Magnus Renfrew, global director of the fair’s organiser, the Art Assembly. International galleries in the Pacifico Yokohama convention halls will include Sadie Coles and Almine Rech, although some of the biggest international gallery franchises, such as Gagosian and David Zwirner, are not on the list this time. But, Renfrew says, “There is a huge amount of excitement and momentum. This is the first step of a longer journey.”

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