Among the most notable programs at Kiaf SEOUL 2025 at COEX, Seoul, is undoubtedly ‘Kiaf Highlights’. Launched in 2023, this program has quickly become one of Kiaf’s signature platforms—not just an extension of the fair booths, but a dedicated stage for discovering emerging artists and presenting them to the international art world.

A Stage that Foretells the Future

Kiaf Highlights selects its final ten participants through a rigorous process: artists recommended by participating galleries are reviewed and chosen by a jury of museum curators and independent curators.

The selected artists are showcased not only in the booths at Kiaf itself but also through media facades across the city and other promotional platforms. During the preview day, three finalists are further announced, each receiving a creation grant of KRW 10 million.
 

 
The Ten Selected Artists

Ahra Kim (Kimreeaa Gallery) draws on the surfaces of dancheong (traditional decorative painting) and architectural structures, combining pigments and acrylic to expand the canvas into a sculptural object.

Jungin Kim (Rahim) reconstructs fragments of urban memory into elaborate pictorial compositions, visualizing intimate narratives through meticulous structure and vibrant color.

Moonassi (Everyday Mooonday), trained in Korean painting at Hongik University, continues his minimalist black-and-white ink drawings on hanji paper, probing the essence of self, emotion, and human relationships.

Grim Park (THEO) merges materials and techniques of traditional Korean painting and Buddhist imagery with contemporary visual culture, addressing themes of gender identity, consumerism, and desire.
 
Nohwan Park (Space Willing & Dealing) conducts material experiments with watercolor and gum arabic—layering, scraping, and rubbing—to foreground sensory impressions over figuration, leaving traces of time across the surface.
 
Donghoon Rhee (Gallery SP) creates sculptures and then reinterprets them in painting, unsettling the boundary between two and three dimensions while exploring the relationship between humanity, technology, and nature.
 
Eunsi Jo (Gallery Meme) works with pictorial surfaces where motifs of distortion and torsion express dissonances in world perception, rearranging fragments of everyday records into new orders within the exhibition space.
 
Sejin Hong (Gallery Planet) transforms her experience of hearing loss and cochlear implants into photographs, videos, and installations that explore how technological devices reconfigure perception.

Geoffroy Pithon (MAĀT Gallery, Paris) layers acrylic and mixed media on blueback paper, interweaving color, language, and spatial strata while evoking memory and place through architectural structures.
 
Yu Xiao (Lucie Chang Fine Arts, Hong Kong) cuts, folds, and reassembles canvases as painterly gestures, visualizing the structures and sensibilities of Asia’s rapidly transforming urban landscapes.
 
These works are far more than experiments by emerging voices; together they embody generational shifts in Korean art as it positions itself on the global stage.
 
 

Another Fair Within Kiaf

Kiaf Highlights is not a mere side program. It functions as a “fair within a fair”—a site where the most experimental and finely tuned sensibilities gather at the margins, announcing the future mainstream to come.
 
For audiences, it offers the joy of unexpected discovery; for galleries and collectors, a long-term horizon for investment and collecting; and for the market as a whole, the possibility of healthy circulation. By aiming beyond short-term sales or publicity to embrace both generational transition and international networks, Kiaf Highlights becomes the platform that elevates today’s peripheries into tomorrow’s center.
 
Ultimately, the program goes beyond the nominal goal of “discovering new artists.” It reveals the potential for the Korean art market to evolve into an ecosystem that breathes with Asia and the wider world. The message of Kiaf Highlights 2025 is clear: the future of the art market lies in the voices of new faces, and in the structures that embrace them.
 
Even in a time when the trade of large-scale works is contracting and the market is restructuring toward mid- and lower-priced segments, the continuous emergence of new artists is essential for the vitality of the ecosystem.
 
Especially noteworthy is that this year’s ten selected artists include two from overseas alongside Korean participants. This extends the program beyond the framework of a “domestic selection” to create generational dialogues linking East Asia and Europe—aligning directly with Kiaf’s strategy to establish itself as a hub of the Asian art market.

References

• Kiaf SEOUL 2025