Frieze today named Im Youngzoo as the recipient of the 2025 Frieze Seoul Artist Award. The award offers an artist based in Korea the opportunity to present a major new commission at Frieze Seoul, marking a significant milestone in their practice.
Now in its third year, the award supports an emerging or mid-career artist to realise an ambitious new
commission, which will debut at Frieze Seoul 2025. The initiative builds on the success of previous Frieze Seoul Artist Award recipients Woo Hannah and Choi Goen, who both realised their works at the fair to significant international critical acclaim.
Im’s proposal was selected by a jury of leading industry figures, including Yeon Shim Chung (Professor of Art History and Theory at Hongik University and Editor of Korean Art from 1953), Gabriel Ritter (Director of the Art, Design, and Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara), Venus Lau (Director of Museum MACAN), artist Minouk Lim, and Jaeseok Kim (former Editor-in-Chief of Art in Culture magazine).
“We are thrilled to present Im Youngzoo as this year’s Frieze Seoul Artist Award recipient. Her work, Calming Signal, offers a profound exploration of collective behavior and societal rhythms, resonating deeply with our 2025 theme, Future Commons. Im’s innovative approach and compelling narrative exemplify the dynamic talent emerging from Korea’s contemporary art scene. We eagerly anticipate sharing her vision with audiences at COEX this September.”
Patrick Lee (Director of Frieze Seoul)
This year, both the Frieze Artist Award in Seoul and London respond to the same theme of Future Commons, with new multimedia works that explore ideas of community and shared experience. Im’s winning commission, Calming Signal, is a research-based, three-channel video installation set within a grid-like structure. The work juxtaposes Earth’s tilted axis with rotational cultural dances, linking gestures of imbalance to visual manifestations of an uncertain future.
The title Calming Signal draws on the instinctual, repetitive behaviours observed in animals under stress.
Through this metaphor, Im considers the underlying signals encoded in contemporary society’s altered and habitual responses to collective unease.
About the artist
Born in 1982, Im Youngzoo’s work examines the intersection of personal narratives and shared histories, often contrasting scientific logic with spiritual and irrational belief systems. Working across video, installation, performance and virtual reality, her practice probes the blurred boundaries between reality and fiction. Im is currently shortlisted for the 2025 Korea Artist Prize by The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and has previously exhibited at Perigee Hall and Gallery (2024), Outsight (2021), and Doosan Gallery (2019), among others.
Tickets to Frieze Seoul 2025 3rd – 6th September 2025 are now available at frieze.com
A dedicated online Frieze Viewing Room will open in the week before the fair, offering audiences a first look at the presentations and the ability to engage with the fair from afar.
