Seoul fashion icon CYLINDER steps onto the international stage

The meteoric rise of 33-year-old Korean art dealer Dooyong Ro began in a former fried chicken shop. He spent four years in London, earning an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art. In 2020, he returned to his birthplace, South Korea. There, he discovered this space in Seoul’s Gwanak district. Initially, he planned to use it as his makeshift art studio. But as the coronavirus lockdown kept him from working for longer than expected, he decided to take a different path when Wonwoo Lee, an artist he admired, inquired about the possibility of hosting an exhibition. Ro decided to offer his space for free.

This marks the launch of CYLINDER, one of Seoul’s most noteworthy emerging galleries, with two locations in the South Korean capital. Next week, the gallery will make its European debut at the Liste Art Fair in Basel, with a group exhibition “Skate Blade” featuring work by Jang Jongwan and Rim Park, two artists who highlight the gallery’s early-career artist program. Many of these artists, like Park, are younger than the gallery owner himself.

“My core motivation is to open up some new paths for my generation and the next generation so that we can just hang out together casually and not be in this hierarchy,” Luo said.

Many in the international art world have come to know CYLINDER after it won the 2023 Frieze Seoul Booth Award for a solo work by South Korean artist Sinae Yoo, whose medieval landscapes are populated by futuristic mythological figures.

For Ro, the award feels more like the culmination of the gallery’s upward trajectory, ironically since he didn’t consider himself a gallerist or his space a gallery when he was first starting out. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, “AI VS AI — Artificial Intelligence VS Artificial Intelligence,” took place in November 2020, featuring work by Lee and Minseo Kim. Soon after, Ro held another exhibition, “Chimera,” with friends like Christine Lee, Iria Vrettou, and Sun Lah. In 2021, he launched the gallery’s now-signature “TORQUE” series, an exhibition of artists who had just completed their undergraduate studies. The first exhibition, “Gear Shift,” featured work by artists like Jonghwan Lee, with whom the gallerist continues to collaborate, culminating in a solo show in the summer of 2023.

“I went through everything they could have gone through,” Luo said, recalling his time as an artist completing his undergraduate studies. For Luo, the TORQUE program was his way of reaching out to newcomers in the art world. It was a key chapter in his gradual adjustment to the world of commercial galleries.

In addition, a major milestone was the gallery’s participation in The Preview, a nomadic art fair held in Hannam-gu, Seoul in June 2021. Ro’s booth, which featured works by Minhee Kim, received positive attention from guests and prominent collectors, giving him a new perspective on the possibilities of CYLINDER.

“I don’t know why people buy these works. [at first]”How did they do that? That was my question. I didn’t know much about the contemporary art ecosystem, but I was curious, so I went to this fair. … I remember the first person who bought this work was a great collector in Korea. … I think [CYLINDER] “Maybe it’s a little different from the other dimension.”

However, it wasn’t until CYLINDER partnered with British painter Tristan Pigott for an exhibition in 2021 that Lo began to consider himself a gallery owner. Lo contacted Pigott, whom he had long admired, and the artist was so interested that he even offered to pay for shipping. The show, titled “Wooden Curtains,” featured seven paintings, including four figurative works in which human figures were depicted in bizarre settings. According to Lo, the exhibition not only attracted a lot of attention, but also sold out. “Then, from this moment on, I started to seriously consider transitioning to becoming a gallery owner,” Lo said.