Here’s a short recap of ArtNomads’ visit (September 29, 2025) to a pretty great Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit in Seoul, which we didn’t know about when planning our trip.

The exhibition is entitled “Signs: Connecting Past and Future“, and runs through January 31, 2026.

I think we saw an ad for it on the subway/metro. The way it was marketed, it felt kind of “commercial” so we weren’t expecting much.

But as Art Nomads, we take every opportunity to see art … so here’s a small portion of what we saw & thought.

Disclaimer: Our admission was complimentary as journalists. However all views below are our own. Note: we were not offered the audio guide, which may have affected our experience.

This Basquiat exhibit, organized with the blessing of his estate, was much larger and more detailed than expected, and included not only 70 paintings & drawings borrowed from across the world (including one which is a Masterworks investment), but pages from his notebooks, which I found fascinating.

There was clearly a bit of neurodivergence on display; these pages helped us understand the artist a bit better.

One page, in particular, seemed almost like the outline to a film script:

Also illuminating were some video interviews; Basquiat was clearly very intelligent, knowledgeable, and well-spoken. Often moreso than his interviewer. This is not some street punk who got lucky. The work on display is the product of a highly-attuned, instinctual individual operating at a different frequency.

Less successful, on the whole, was the curator/organizer’s attempt to interweave Korean artists’ works into the exhibition. Basquiat spent some time in Asia, and his work was influenced by that experience, so it’s certainly an avenue worth exploring.

Name Jun Paik’s sculpture(s) worked ok. Other works, like the brush paintings, were lovely in their own right, but the tie-in just didn’t resonate.

Still; if you’re headed to Seoul in late ’25 or Jan ’26, this is a very worthwhile exhibit.

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Our Rating:

Last updated: 1/15/2016