In the Gaps: Emerging Galleries and New Artistic Ecologies
by Next Korea: Galleries
With Riah Lee (Galerist, IAH Seoul) & Jungwoo Lee (Galerist, WWNN Seoul), moderated by Jiwon Yu (Co-Curator, Second Nature)
A first collaboration with Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS) brings seven emerging Korean galleries to Paris through NEXT KOREA: GALLERIES.
Seoul’s art scene has become increasingly dense and layered, shaped by commercial galleries, alternative and project spaces, institutions, and artists who move fluidly between them. Bringing together Riah Lee of IAH, Jungwoo Lee of WWNN, and Second Nature’s co-curator Jiwon Yu, this conversation considers how a younger generation of galleries is locating itself within—and responding to the gaps in—this evolving landscape, while rethinking what it means to represent, support, and grow with artists. Moving beyond the familiar language of “international expansion,” the discussion also looks at what happens when these locally specific ways of working enter a context such as Paris: how they are translated and reshaped, and how encounters between different artistic ecologies might generate productive friction and mutual learning.
Talk in English
Jiwon Yu is a Seoul-based independent curator, writer, and translator whose practice explores cultural infrastructures, queer-crip epistemologies, and situated forms of knowledge production through artistic practices and networks across Asia. She was Assistant Curator of the 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale and Curator at Leeum Museum of Art. She is co-director of YPC SPACE (@ypc.seoul) a collectively run exhibition and program space in Seoul, and teaches art history and theory at Seoul National University of Science and Technology.
IAH is a contemporary art gallery based in Seoul, founded in 2022. The gallery works through spatial, material, and linguistic structures that unfold over time. We are grounded in a belief that form operates across material and perceptual dimensions, shaping how relation is sensed and how presence takes form. IAH works with artists through long-term dialogue. Each exhibition and fair grows from what has been developed before, allowing the program to build through duration, context, and continued exchange. The gallery sustains a practice across generations, geographies, and mediums, contributing to contemporary art as a shared field.
Founded in Samcheong-dong, Seoul, in 2023, WWNN Gallery is built upon the collaboration between co-director Juhyun Oh, a curator with experience across institutional and commercial contexts, and co-director Jungwoo Lee, an artist. The gallery’s program is grounded in a commitment to examining artistic practice through research, critical dialogue, and historical awareness.
WWNN situates itself within the cultural ecosystem of Seoul while consistently expanding its international reach. Through collaborations with neighbouring institutions as well as partnerships and exchange exhibitions with galleries abroad, we aim to create conditions in which the practices of our represented and collaborating artists circulate across multiple cities and discursive contexts.