Jason Haam didn’t develop up dreaming of turning into a gallerist. The truth is, earlier than 2015, the 31-year-old Korean artwork supplier, who graduated with an engineering diploma from Cornell College, didn’t know or care an amazing deal about artwork and its market.
Right this moment, his eponymous Seoul gallery, based in 2018, is only one of simply eight to participate in each Kiaf and the inaugural Frieze Seoul this week. Amongst Korean galleries, Jason Haam is exclusive for solely working with artists who stay outdoors the nation, nearly all of whom haven’t any Korean heritage. In its 4 years, it has staged 17 exhibits by international artists together with the primary Seoul exhibitions of Sarah Lucas and the German painter Daniel Sinsel. In what is maybe the gallery’s greatest coup up to now, it final week opened the primary solo exhibition of Swiss industrial darling Urs Fischer in Seoul (Fischer has beforehand proven on the Gwangju Biennale).
Jason Haam gallery in Seoul
Courtesy of Jason Haam gallery
Going from a digital unknown to a severe participant in certainly one of Asia’s most heated up to date artwork scenes inside 4 years isn’t any straightforward feat, and Haam admits to having had a transparent head begin together with his artwork profession. His father—a outstanding dermatologist in Seoul—and mom are collectors, primarily of Twentieth-century Korean modernists. When Haam was 23, they helped him buy his first work, a Yoshitomo Nara print from Tempo.
“My first foray into dealing artwork was promoting work to my mum or dad’s buddies. I used my uncommon diploma of entry to supply top-level works and get a fee. It was good money for my early twenties,” he says. “At the moment I didn’t know a factor about what working with artists entailed. I had no concept about contracts or consignments. I used to be positively in it for the cash.”
Shortly, this aspect hustle become a real ardour, on which Haam was spending a lot time he determined to stop his job and open an area within the rich neighbourhood of Seongbuk-Dong within the metropolis’s north.
Jason Haam gallery’s programme is centred round portray, and provides lots of its artists their first solo present in East Asia. As to why he chooses to characterize primarily foreigners, Haam says that having gone to high school in Switzerland after which college in America has inspired him to “look past nationality” when contemplating artwork: “I wished this to be a world enterprise from the beginning, and by no means simply promote to Koreans or present work from one nation.” On a extra sensible stage, he additionally sensed a rising urge for food for Western work amongst Korea’s rich and aspirational younger gathering class—the identical development that satisfied Frieze to plant its flag in Seoul.
Urs Fischer’s Pink Motor exhibition put in at Jason Haam gallery Courtesy of Jason Haam gallery
However on the gallerist’s core, he says, is a fascination and deep respect for artists. Certainly, Haam desires to function a course correction for the skilled behaviour he has observed from various different sellers within the nation. “There aren’t many good galleries in Korea, from a perspective of enterprise ethics. Artwork hasn’t been profitable for very lengthy right here, and generally gallerists really feel they should make ends meet, so they do not do the proper issues,” he says. “I persist with a algorithm and do not stray from them. I pay artists on time and I am clear with my shoppers. Easy as that.”
Whereas Haam admits that he needed to shake off a repute as somebody that simply dealt to his dad and mom’ buddies, he provides that he additionally skilled most of the struggles of a younger gallerist. As any supplier can attest, beginning out is a dangerous, unstable enterprise and till final yr, he says the gallery “haemorrhaged cash” and scraped by on “a number of loans”. Media consideration on his programme was “non-existent” and he offered a complete of three works over the primary 10 festivals he took half in, which incorporates Artwork Busan, Daegu Artwork Honest, Artwork Brussels and Seattle Artwork honest. To maintain his enterprise he continued dealing in secondary market Twentieth-century works—one thing he wasn’t eager to do, as he felt it “diluted his consideration” from his rising love of up to date artwork.
A part of his present success, Haam says, could be attributed to the tutelage of key figures within the artwork world, chief amongst them being Sadie Coles, whom he wrote to early in his profession asking for recommendation. To his welcome shock, the London gallerist responded, sending certainly one of her administrators to go to his Seoul house, after which, ultimately arranging for him to indicate Sarah Lucas’s work in 2019.
“Sadie and I’ve very related concepts about methods to deal with artists and run a enterprise—I’ve discovered quite a bit from her,” Haam says. Each exhibits of Daniel Sinsel and Urs Fischer, who’re on the rosters of Coles’s gallery, have been additionally organised together with her assist. The Fischer present is considerably uncommon in that it concentrates solely on his new work (Fischer has sculptures at each Coles and Haam’s cubicles at Frieze Seoul). However it is going to be a great way for Coles to check the marketplace for these works in Seoul with out having to open a brick-and-mortar house herself, whereas additionally benefitting a younger gallerist.
A mixed case of excellent fortune, good ethics, good buddies and now good timing, Haam is driving excessive on the forefront of the Korean artwork world’s new wave. Many guests to Frieze shall be studying his identify for the primary time, however it’s unlikely to be the final they may hear it, with gross sales from the opening days of the honest suggesting that Seoul is right here to remain.
“I didn’t have any expectation for Seoul to blow up like this. Sure it has nice establishments and taxes are low, however I moved right here as a result of its my dwelling,” Haam says. He underlines the importance of Frieze’s arrival by likening the Seoul honest to “his era’s Olympics” (town hosted the worldwide occasion in 1988). Capitalising on a newfound worldwide curiosity in his programme, Haam says he intends to open up additional areas in Seoul, including {that a} location overseas is “not off the desk”, so long as it serves his artists.
Not that getting cash is not nonetheless a key precedence. When requested what his finish objective for the gallery is, he states plainly: “I need to be wealthy and for my employees to be wealthy. I need to present nice artwork and make plenty of cash from doing it.”
• Urs Fischer: Pink Motor, Jason Haam, till 18 October
