Ahead of Frieze Seoul kicking off on Sept. 4, Seoul is in a festive mood with numerous art exhibitions and events taking place at museums, galleries and auction houses around the city. In a two-part series, The Korea Herald offers a roundup of selected events in the city -- in southern and northern parts of the capital. The following piece is the first in the series. -- Ed.

Its streets lined with flagship stores of luxury brands, Cheongdam-dong, a neighborhood in Seoul south of the Han River, is also known for its galleries, including Songeun Art Space, which is hard to miss given its striking building designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

Coinciding with Frieze Seoul, the museum, in collaboration with the Pinault Collection, is presenting “Portrait of a Collection” starting Wednesday. The Pinault Collection, French billionaire businessperson Francois Pinault’s collection of contemporary art, holds more than 10,000 works of art by some of the world’s established artists.

Curated by Caroline Bourgeois, chief curator of the Pinault Collection, the exhibition will bring together some 60 contemporary artworks from the French foundation, featuring pieces by David Hammons, Marlene Dumas, Danh Vo and Anri Sala. The exhibition will show for the first time in Asia works by African American artist David Hammons.

A few minutes down the street from the museum is Perrotin Seoul, which is showing “Ghost in the Machine.” The exhibition presents works by Canadian artist Jason Boyd Kinsella who explores the nature of the human psyche by breaking down traits and personalities into geometric units, defining individuality through various shapes, colors and sizes.

“Personality indicators are something I discovered when I was a teenager. All the paintings here are of the real people that are in my life. It could be family or friends or maybe a musician that inspired me,” the artist said in Seoul, adding that sculptors appeal to him, including the works of Henry Moore.

Aware of the popularity of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) among Koreans as an identifier of a person's characteristics, the artist said he took the test and found his type was INFJ, a personality type with introverted, intuitive feeling and judging traits.

Next to Perrotin Seoul is White Cube, which presents paintings and works on paper by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco. The exhibition marks the first anniversary of the gallery's opening in Seoul and is another must-see exhibition coinciding with Frieze Seoul.

Orozco’s diverse conceptual practices spanning painting, drawings, sculpture, photography, architecture and design draw from his surroundings. Since the early 1990s, his practice has involved referencing local, easily available materials and observing geometries within the natural world.

Orozco’s new body of work is developed from his “Diarios des Plantas,” a series of over 700 works on paper comprising leaf prints and washes of gouache and graphite created between 2021 and 2022. Originally contained in 33 notebooks, the series forms a visual encyclopedia of the local flora and fauna that the artist encountered in Acapulco, Mexico and Tokyo, Japan.

A 20-minute walk from White Cube is Italian gallery Massimodecarlo’s Seoul studio, which starting Tuesday will show works by Swiss artist John Armleder, a contemporary art master whose artistic philosophy was influenced by the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Gladstone Gallery, a few minutes on foot from Massimodecarlo, will show the first solo exhibition in Korea of American artist Joan Jonas, a pioneer of video and performance art.

The exhibition, “Joan Jonas: the Wind Sings,” opening Thursday, will shed light on the artist’s multidisciplinary approach to making art, bridging the boundaries between video, performance, installation, sculpture and drawing over five decades.

The exhibition includes Jonas' most recent work, “By a Thread in the Wind,” a collection of large Vietnamese Do paper and bamboo kites that premiered in her survey exhibition, "Good Night Good Morning," at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Also in Cheongdam-dong, Korea’s fast-emerging gallery G Gallery will show Korean artist Hwang Sue-yon’s new works in the exhibition, “Pastel, Bullet, Beautiful Fingers,” in which Hwang explores paper sculptures created with paper and graphite in a witty way.

Ahead of its September auction event, Seoul Auction in Sinsa-dong is presenting a preview exhibition featuring works by Korea's leading modern and contemporary artists Kim Whan-ki, Park Seo-bo, Yoo Young-kuk, Yun Hyong-keun and Shim Moon-seup, Yee Soo-kyung and Yang Hae-gue. The auction will start at 4 p.m. on Sept. 10.

Shinsegae Gallery at Boon the Shop in Cheongdam-dong will show “The Flower Cutter Rests on Dust Covered Steps," presenting some 40 new works by Los Angeles-based artist Sterling Ruby, whose works embrace a wide range of mediums and explore how individual expression confronts the constraints of society. The exhibition starts on Thursday and runs through Nov. 30.

At Atelier Hermes, inside Maison Hermes in front of Dosan Park in Sinsa-dong, new work by emerging video artist Kim Hee-cheon is on view. Kim, the winner of the 20th Hermes Foundation Missulsang, one of the most prestigious art awards in Korea, articulates uncertainty with his interpretation of horror through "Studies," a 40-minute live-action video.

Ahead of Frieze Seoul kicking off on Sept. 4, Seoul is in a festive mood with numerous art exhibitions and events taking place at museums, galleries and auction houses around the city. In a two-part series, The Korea Herald offers a roundup of selected events in the city -- in southern and northern parts of the capital. The following piece is the first in the series. -- Ed.