The 100^th ARTCaffè hosted Andy St. Louis, one of the most insightful voices shaping how Korean contemporary art is seen both in South Korea and abroad. Based in Seoul formore than a decade, Andy is the founder of Seoul Art Friend, a platform documenting the city’s vibrant art scene, and the author of Future Present: Contemporary Korean Art, the first English-language survey of millennial Korean artists. He was recently appointed Director of Frieze House Seoul, opened in September 2025, marking a unique path from critic to curator to cultural leader.

In conversation with Andy, we traced the turning points that shaped his career.

Below is a recap of The Talk.

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ARTCaffè: When you first arrived in Seoul (in 2009) what drew you to the city — both as a place to live and as a place to practice art criticism and curating? What early moments made you decide you could build a meaningful career here?

Andy St. Louis: I first arrived after graduating from university in 2009 and lived in here for 4 years, then moved back to USA for 5 years (LA and New York), before returning to Korea permanently in 2018. I initially knew nothing about Korean art (aside from Nam June Paik) and my move was not career-oriented, but just survival-oriented as I tried to wait out the ongoing economic recession during my first year out of college.

For the first year, I taught English at auniversity and also tutored several private students on the side. One of those private students was the son of Sunjung Kim, one of the most prominent curators both then and now. After I finished my contract at the university, I did a summer internship at Sunjung’s curatorial agency, called SAMUSO, where I worked on several meaningful projects including Haegue Yang’ssolo exhibition at Art Sonje Center and the 6th Seoul Mediacity Biennale in 2010, mostly working on PR and publications. This was a crucial early experience that allowed me to get my foot in the door of the Korean art world, but I still had only lived here for about a year and I didn’t really know much about Korean art. There was a conspicuous lack of up-to-date and relevant information in English about what was happening in the contemporary art scene, so the only way to acquire knowledge was to go see things and experience them for yourself.

At first, I did so without giving much thought to career possibilities, and more so out of a desire to better understand Korean art. I wasn’t writing about art at the time, just trying to immerse myself in the scene, which all felt very exciting and full of energy.

ARTCaffè: At the very beginning of your experience here, you started writing about art. How did you get into writing?

Andy St. Louis: I wrote my first paid article in Fall of 2010—a roundup of KIAF, the Gwangju Biennale and Seoul Mediacity Biennale for a NewYork-based independent publication called M Magazine (I’m not sure if it’s still around). But I found it difficult to get any traction with more serious art publications overseas, since I was still very young and relatively inexperienced.

However, I found myself increasingly surrounded by an extremely creative community of both foreigners and Koreans, most of whom were making art, music, film and performance. Everyone was hustling and making things happen, creating chances for themselves rather than waiting for opportunities to come along.

It was against this backdrop that I decided to start my own publication along with another American expat: Concrete Experience, a journal of contemporary photography and creative writing, which we self-published in April 2011 and held a launch party at a local gallery where we also exhibited works by the four featured photographers in the first issue. This project was met with an overwhelmingly positive response from the community, as a physical manifestation of the creative energy that we all felt so powerfully.

In June 2011, I took part in an important independent book fair called Unlimited Edition, which was in its 3rd edition at that time (now it has become an enormous event, held at Buk-SeMA every year and attracting thousands of visitors). I brought Concrete Experience to Unlimited Edition, and it sold a few copies. But the most meaningful outcome from that event was actually a new friendship with the exhibitors I ended up sharing a table with at the fair.

They were both graphic designers who had all sorts of amazing posters and other printed matter for sale, but the one of them was actually a writer as well, and she was working for a new magazine called Eloquence, which billed itself as an“international creators magazine.” And thanks to our coincidental placement next to each other at Unlimited Edition, she recommended me to hereditor-in-chief, who gave me my first opportunity to write for a magazine in Korea.

I ended upbecoming an editor at the magazine, responsible for 5 pieces of content each month, as well as its chief copy editor.

Although most of the magazine’s contents were in interview format, I persuaded the editorial team to let me publish one exhibition review per month at the beginning of each issue. I interviewed artists from Korea and overseas, as well as curators, musicians, architects and creative professionals working across multiple fields. These were all valuable experiences that proved to be formative in my career development.

ARTCaffè: So many things happened by chance. But I’m pretty sure you also had some challenges along the way. In your first few years working in the Korean art scene, what were some of the biggest challenges you faced — culturally, linguistically, institutionally— and how did you navigate them? Was there a turning point or a project that made you feel you were really landing your voice?

Andy St. Louis: First, it’s important to note that I have been very privileged throughout my time in Korea. As an English-speaker, as an American, there were always plenty of job options available as a teacher. And even while I was making my own publication and working for a monthly magazine, I had to keep teaching as well—I wasn’t at all interested in teaching English, but that was the only way that I could legally continue living here.

So I tried to find the sort of teaching situation that I was able to tolerate, while still having time to be able to do my art-related work on the side. So after that first year teaching at university, I taught for a couple semesters at a women’s college and ultimately ended up working in an after-school English program at an elementary school.

But another concern at this time was financial, as I realized that the magazine work was very poorly compensated. However, it was a means to an end—namely, developing my skillset as a writer and editor while also broadening my understanding about Korean visual culture. And I could feel it starting to pay off in small but meaningful ways.

I began to make new connections in the art world through my position as editor at Eloquence. One of the first such connections came in an email that arrived out of the blue from the director of One and J. Gallery. This was a gallery that I had been following for some time and it was very exciting that the gallery took an interest in what I was doing. So I went in for a meeting, and that’s how I first met Pat Lee, who was the gallery director at the time and has remained a friend since then. Now, he is my boss at Frieze.            

But the challenges to actually building a career from what I was doing were too great at the time. By 2013, I was in my mid-20s and feeling quite hopeless. I was working all the time, earning very little money, and it was difficult to see a viable path forward—you have to remember that Korean culture was still very under-the-radar for most people around the world. Gangnam Style was released in summer of 2012, but that was seen by most people as a singular cultural phenomenon without any connection to other aspects of Korean culture.

So in fall of2013 I shut down Seoul Art Fiend and moved back to the USA, starting in LA. I got a job at a contemporary art gallery called Blum & Poe, where among other projects I worked on a landmark Dansaekhwa exhibition curated by Joan Keeth at essentially launched artists like Park Seo-bo, Ha Chong-hyun and YunHyong-keun into the international art market.

I later moved to New York, where I hoped to land a job at a non-profit or art foundation, but I found it difficult to gain any traction in that environment, surrounded by people who had been active in the city for many years already. My accomplishments and experiences in Korea didn’t seem to translate to what employers were looking for.

Then, as we all know, Donald Trump was elected in 2016 and the USA became less and less attractive to me as a place to live. So, in 2018, I decided to move back to Korea—this time with the deliberate intention to reestablish myself as a writer and try once again to find a foothold in the Korean art world.

ARTCaffè: Seoul Art Friend was launched in 2018 and has been a critical resource for documenting and promoting Seoul’s contemporary art scene.What motivated you to found it, and what gaps were you trying to fill that existing platforms weren’t addressing? How has it evolved overtime?

Andy St. Louis: The genesis of Seoul Art Friend actually dates back to 2011 as well. There was a website called Seoul Art Fiend that was run by an Expat from Scotland as a hybrid personal blog and public resource. She would sporadically post about exhibitions that she had visited, as well as publish listings of exhibitions that were on view each month. This was a key resource in my early days exploring the art scene in Seoul.

I got in touch with her in summer of 2011, before I started working at Eloquence, to ask if I could also contribute to her site with exhibition reviews. She was very open to the idea, although she probably didn’t expect much from me. So I wrote a few reviews, which she then uploaded to the site, but then she stopped publishing the exhibition listings. She had actually moved back to Scotland, and although she was happy to upload my contents to the site, she wasn’t really sure what to do with Seoul Art Fiend, since she had no plans to return to Korea. So I asked her if I could take it over, and she kindly agreed.

I immediately started working on the exhibition listings, and over time I expanded them to include up to 100 exhibitions every month. I saw this as the primary value proposition of the website, since at the time there wasn’t an easy way for English speakers to find out about exhibitions in Seoul.

When I moved back to Korea in 2018, I resumed the Seoul Art Fiend project, but I renamed it to be more friendly. People had been mistakenly referring to it as “Seoul Art Friend” anyway, and I thought it was much better that way—instead of correcting them and explaining the meaning of “fiend” etc.

I also expanded the content offerings of Seoul Art Friend, with the website retaining its original function as a repository for monthly exhibition listings, augmented by a social media presence. I launched an Instagram account, which served as avisual archive of exhibitions that I visited in Seoul, as well as a Facebook page, which posted and reposted news stories and major announcements about the Korean art world.

At the time, and actually even now, there wasn’t a single source of comprehensive exhibition listings in English. And just as the Seoul art scene had expanded since 2013, so did the listings, which numbered well over 100 each month, sometimes even 200. Even though the site wasn’t making money, I thought it was an important resource that filled a significant information gap, and it also helped me toget a better understanding of the scope of the contemporary art field in Korea and the major players involved.

Over time, the burden of compiling all the exhibitions became too much for me to maintain, so I transitioned to uploading a selection of 7 exhibitions every week to the Seoul Art Friend Instagram account. This is more manageable than researching and updating hundreds of exhibitions each month, and I think it also provides more value for my audience by presenting a curated selection that I endorse, more or less.

As I’ve recently started a new full-time position at Frieze House Seoul, I’ve unfortunately been neglecting the Seoul Art Friend Instagram account. But there are plans to get it back up a running with regular posts and the same weekly listings that have become associated with Seoul Art Friend.

ARTCaffè: You’ve contributed to many international publications (ArtAsiaPacific, ArtReview Asia, frieze, to name a few.) How did you build those connections, and how do you balance writing for a local vs. global audience? Was there a moment when your international work significantly changed your perspective, or opened up new possibilities?

Andy St. Louis: To begin, I’ve been Seoul desk editor for ArtAsiaPacific since 2019. As someone living in Korea with a clear focus on Korean art, it was always my dream to write for ArtAsiaPacific. I subscribed to the magazine and I made several overtures to editors there, but when I was in my 20s, I didn’t have any credibility as an art critic and so they never took me seriously. It was the same thing with other publications at that time—they were more interested in writers with established track records.

This was kind of a catch-22… how do you gain the necessary credibility to write for an international magazine, unless one of those magazines actually gives you an opportunity first? So, back then, I just focused on doing my work for Eloquence and maintaining Seoul Art Fiend, which were the only things that were within my control.

Looking back on it now, I sort of understand the stance of those international magazines. In my20s, I didn’t really have enough perspective on the contemporary art world, nor sufficient understanding of the Korean one. Basically, I didn’t really know what I was talking about. And without a master’s degree or another way for those magazines to be certain of my qualifications, it would be risky to commission me to write for them.

I now know that the editors at such magazines are so overworked and underpaid that they are always looking for ways to make their jobs simpler, not more complicated.

When I came back to Korea in 2018, I was able to leverage some connections in my network to help me get a foot in the door at ArtAsiaPacific and artforum. And when I did get the chance to submit to those magazines, I simply accepted the terms I was given and hustled to make my texts as good as possible, as well as meeting the deadlines I was given.

ArtAsiaPacific is an interesting example of this. They publish an “Almanac” issue every January, which is sort of an index of all the countries in the APAC region through the lens of their contemporary art scenes. For whatever reason, the Korean writer who had been commissioned for this text in the past was suddenly unavailable, and the editor was scrambling to find someone to fill in. It so happened that the editor reached out to a bunch of art world professionals in Korea for recommendations, one of whom was the director of Whistle Gallery, Kyungmin Lee.

I had actually met her long ago, when she was a curator at One and J. Gallery, so she knew my history and she must have vouched for me with the ArtAsiaPacific editor, because they commissioned me right away. They gave me a ridiculously short deadline, but somehow I managed to get everything done and do a reasonably good job at it as well.

After that, I started pitching exhibition reviews to ArtAsiaPacific on a regular basis. And I noticed that the Korea desk editor hadn’t published anything in the magazine for more than a year, so I inquired with my editor about the position. I guess I was in the right place at the right time, and I had done enough work for the magazine already that they could trust me with an editorial title on the masthead.

That was really big for my credibility, it was the kind of validation that other magazines wanted to see before working with a new writer like me. I kept writing for ArtAsiaPacific, but I also started making connections with editors at other magazines and pitching reviews, profiles and other types of content. Eventually, publications that I had never contacted before started reaching out to me with writing commissions. The most significant of these was the FinancialTimes, which asked me to write for them in 2023. And I’ve continued to write for them since then, as well as for other publications like frieze and The ArtNewspaper.

Over the years, magazines started asking me to write bigger and more meaningful profiles and features. This really accelerated this year, when I wrote a piece in February about Suki Seokyeong Kang (it was the last interview that she did before she passed away) for Art Basel Stories, then Lee Bul for frieze, and Ayoung Kim for Artforum (forthcoming in November).

In terms of writing for a Korean vs international audience—I’m mostly writing for an international audience, since that’s where my primary audience is. However, I also write a lot of essays about Korean audiences that get published in exhibition catalogues, and I even though the audience reading those texts is also Korean, I don’t think my writing really changes that much. Maybe I feel more license to reference aspects of Korean art history and philosophy, but I still put my spin on those topics (and I find that many Koreans may be familiar with certain terminology that I use, but lack a deeper understanding of how it connects to contemporary art).

ARTCaffè: Your recent book, Future Present: Contemporary Korean Art (2024) is the first English-language survey of millennial Korean artists. What was the process like putting that together — choosing whom to include /exclude, finding voices, deciding themes — and what impact do you hope the book will have within Korea and beyond?

Andy St. Louis: I literally gave a whole talk about this at the Korea Society earlier this year, but I’ll try to give a bit more of a behind-the-scenes view of the process here.

First, the motivation to focus on millennial artists. By 2024, millennial artists — people in their 30s and early 40s — had really established themselves. They’d developed their own vision, they were confident in what they were doing, and the work they were making wasn’t just relevant, it was significant in art-historical terms. They weren’t “emerging” anymore — they were fully fledged contemporary artists. But they still weren’t getting the recognition they deserved.

Gen X artists were still dominating the scene — not just in Korea, but everywhere. I’m a millennial too, so I’ll admit there was probably a bit of ego in there — that sense of being overlooked. But really, these artists are doing important work. Their practices speak to universal themes and feel very much like the future of Korean art — but also the present. Hence the title, Future Present.

Many of these artists I’d known personally for years — I’d been going to their shows, following their work — so I saw them as peers and wanted to give them that spotlight. There’ve been so many books about Gen X and boomer artists, and they’re all great, of course, but it just felt like it was finally time for this generation to be recognized.

The generational frame I used was roughly 1980 to 1991, though I stretched it a little to include a few late ’70s artists who I saw as kind of leading figures of the millennial generation.

The second big decision was to work with an international publisher — Skira, in Italy — rather than a Korean one. It was really important to me that the book have international distribution. If I’d published it here, it would’ve just stayed in Korea, and that would’ve defeated the purpose. Skira did a beautiful job printing it, and I’m super happy with how it turned out.

I also decided not to impose any kind of thematic framework — I didn’t want to put these artists in a conceptual box that didn’t necessarily fit. The generational framing was the most objective way to bring them together. Each artist’s section has a short essay from me and seven pages of images — which is a lot more than most comparable survey books. I really wanted to give each artist space and dignity.

The selection process took over a year — making lists, crossing people out, adding new ones, going to shows, realizing I’d missed someone, putting them back in. In the end, I settled on 25 artists because that felt like the right balance.

I also tried to balance mediums — there are 11 painters, about 5 sculptors, 5 or 6 videoartists — which roughly reflects the reality of the Korean art scene, where painting still dominates. I tried to avoid too much thematic overlap. And interestingly, around 80% of the artists ended up being women. That wasn’t intentional, but it’s actually pretty representative of the Korean art world right now — and honestly, the global one too.

As a foreigner writing about Korean artists, I was really conscious of the risk of seeming, you know, colonial or presumptuous — like, “I know what Korean art is.” So to counter that, I commissioned essays from two Korean millennial curators who actually grew up in the same social and technological environment as the artists. Their essays really ground the book in that lived generational experience.

And I also worked with a Korean designer — also a millennial — who’d designed catalogs for many of the artists in the book. So in the end, it was a total millennial collaboration: the writer, the artists, the curators, the designer — all from the same generation. And I’m really proud of that.

The book is already having a significant impact—if sales are any indication. It was released in May 2024 and sold out of its first print run by the end of the year. We published a reprint with updated artist CVs and other minor tweaks as a second edition, which was released over the summer, and my current priority is trying to have the book acquired by as many university libraries as possible (particularly in the USA) as well as contemporary art institutions around the world. I think this is a really important moment in contemporary Korean art history, and this book tells the story of the generation that is really driving Korean art forward and into the future.

The desired impact is for the 25 artists featured in the book to gain more visibility among the international contemporary art world—and international art audiences more generally. I want them to get the respect that they deserve, and more opportunities to exhibit their work in biennials and institutional group shows worldwide. Of course, I hope that my book may help them secure gallery representation and perhaps be a qualifying factor for them to be considered forsolo institutional exhibitions, but those decisions are made based on a widerange of conditions.

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ARTCaffè: Recently, you were appointed Director of Frieze House Seoul, a new permanent space launched in Sept 2025 in Yaksu-dong. How did that opportunity arise for you, and what were some of the big shifts in mindset or skills required to move from criticism and curating into institutional leadership / managing a space with year-round programming?

Andy St. Louis: Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I always harbored a desire to run an art space in Seoul. I just never was able put all the pieces together in order to make it a reality. I had previously done consulting work for several galleries in Korea, both domestic and international, but making the jump from a support role into a leadership position remained elusive.

From the outside, it might have seemed like I had reached a point of relative stability in my career—I was consistently writing meaningful texts and curating exhibitions that pushed me to think more deeply about ideas that truly interested me, I had a successful book under my belt, etc. But it was all still quite precarious, since everything was freelance.

So when Frieze House Seoul was announced and the director job became open, I felt as if finally I might be able to leverage all my accumulated experience in the Korean art world and realize my ambition to take the helm of an art space in Seoul.

Just as in all my previous opportunities in the Korean art world, the path to securing the position for myself opened up thanks to the hard work I had put in over many years and the relationships that I was able to develop in that time. Pat and I have known each other for 15 years, and although we’ve collaborated on small projects here and there over the years, we never had the chance to formally partner up. However, he has always been a strong supporter of my work and a trusted advisor whose guidance has helped me chart my own path through the Korean art world that led to this moment.

I want to make it clear, however, that by no means was it a foregone conclusion that I would be selected as director of Frieze House Seoul. It was a rigorous application process and I feel extremely grateful and honored to be the person given the responsibility of leading this project into the future.

Thinking about the skillsets and competencies that this new job requires, I think what it boils down to is having a strategic vision for what Frieze House Seoul can be, combined with a deep knowledge of the local art scene and its intricate inner workings. And my role in that art scene has shifted, of course—now, I’m focusing on the bigger picture of how Seoul fits into the global contemporary art landscape, finding the resonances between what artists and galleries outside Korea are doing and the issues and themes that are most urgent and impactful at the local level.

But it’s still project-based, it’s still about providing the best platform possible for contemporary artists and the public to engage in authentic exchange, it’s still based in my passion and commitment to expanding the discourse around art and visual culture here in Korea, and the impact that can have in the world beyond. It’s very exciting and I’m looking forward to leading Frieze House Seoul in becoming a house of culture and home for creatives.

Frieze House Seoul is located in Yaksu, between the Shilla Hotel and Yaksu Station — the Sindang-dong area, near the old Seoul city wall. It’s a beautiful house with a great garden and a really interesting space. We just closed our first exhibition, which was very successful — a big group show of queer artists — and we’re looking forward to bringing a full slate of programs next year as we work toward full occupancy and bringing as many people through as possible.

So stay tuned forthat!