Key Takeaways
- Focus Art Fair’s fourth edition centers on the theme “human‑technology coexistence,” reflecting both artistic curiosity and corporate sponsorship (notably LG Electronics).
- Interactive installations such as Hwia Kim’s “What if two eyes don’t work together?” immediately immerse visitors in a bodily‑centric exploration of digital mediation.
- The fair showcases a diverse roster of Asian and diaspora artists, blending traditional media (painting, sculpture) with technologically infused works.
- Several pieces highlight personal and collective narratives of connection—twin collaboration, familial bonds, and cross‑border solidarity—offering tender counterpoints to the more clinical tech‑focused exhibits.
- Political commentary appears subtly, e.g., Annu Yadav’s hibiscus‑dripping IV installation commenting on the militarized India‑Pakistan border.
- While large LG screens dominate the visual landscape, many visitors found the most resonant works to be those emphasizing human or supernatural intimacy rather than sheer technological spectacle.
- The fair ultimately poses the enduring question “What is art?” suggesting that any human‑made expression—whether analog, digital, or hybrid—qualifies as art.
Arrival and First Impressions
Upon entering the Thursday press preview of Focus Art Fair at Chelsea Industrial, I was greeted by a lobby pulsing with digital elements. A recording of my own visage played on a screen, but the image was altered: a giant eyeball hovered over my face. This striking introduction came from Hwia Kim’s interactive piece “What if two eyes don’t work together?”—the fair’s opening salvo for its fourth‑edition theme, “human‑technology coexistence.” The work felt both playful and unsettling, hinting at how technology can augment, distort, or even dominate our perception of self. The presence of LG Electronics as a leading sponsor underscored the fair’s willingness to engage directly with corporate tech culture, setting a tone that blended artistic inquiry with commercial partnership.
The F‑Twins and Primarealism
Immediately after the eye‑tracking installation, I encountered the Ukrainian‑born identical twins Anna and Valeriia Lyshchenko, known collectively as the F‑Twins. Warm and articulate, they described their collaborative practice as the foundation of the Primarealism movement, a response to what they see as a growing cultural tendency to outsource critical thinking to artificial intelligence. Their displayed works—“You Don’t Have To” (2026), a painting of a hand removing a blue nail from another, and “To save the first, you have to see the night sky of me” (2026), a black charcoal and gold‑leaf on paper—explored self‑determination and intimate interconnectedness. The twins explained that their art extends the innate bond they share as siblings to a broader invitation for viewers to reconsider reliance on external intelligences and to reclaim autonomous thought.
Political Symbolism in Annu Yadav’s Installation
Near the Opening Gallery’s entrance, a more overtly political work caught my eye: an IV‑type contraption slowly dripping hibiscus juice onto a miniature white model of the Himalayas. This was part of Annu Yadav’s installation “This Land is Wounded” (2025), a commentary on the militarized border between India and Pakistan. The choice of hibiscus—a flower associated with both South Asian culture and remembrance—added a layer of mourning to the clinical imagery of the IV drip. By allowing the liquid to seep onto the sculpted landscape, Yadav evoked a sense of gradual, almost invisible erosion, suggesting that geopolitical tensions inflict a slow, bodily wound on the land and its inhabitants. The piece stood out for its ability to translate a stark geopolitical issue into a visceral, sensory experience.
Taezoo Park’s Nostalgic Tech Sculptures
At the Jakupsil booth, Taezoo Park presented two works that together formed a meditation on forgotten technology. “Hacked Snoopy” (2025) placed the iconic cartoon dog atop a copy of Nicholas Negroponte’s 1995 treatise Being Digital, the figure adorned with electronic chips that hinted at both homage and intrusion. Adjacent to it, “Yellow Candle with Sony 5‑303W” (2024) exposed the naked internals of a vintage television, its glowing bulb resembling a candle. Gallery founder Brett Lee explained that Park treats these objects as memorials—digital beings that, despite obsolescence, “live forever” in cultural memory. The sculptures invited viewers to reflect on the lifecycle of technology, mourning the devices that once shaped daily life while questioning the permanence of their digital afterlives.
Kento Senga’s FiNGA and Personal Connection
Navigating the fair’s central area, I nearly missed Japanese pop icon Kento Senga, a visual artist and member of the boy band Kis‑My‑Ft2, surrounded by a small crowd and his translator. Senga spoke about FiNGA, his signature character distinguished by two fingers for ears, describing how he shares these drawings with his grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, as a means of maintaining connection despite cognitive decline. The simplicity of FiNGA’s design belied its emotional potency: the finger‑ears become a visual metaphor for listening, for reaching out across the barriers of memory loss. Senga’s testimony underscored a recurring theme at the fair—technology and art as tools for sustaining intimate human bonds when conventional communication falters.
Ari Kim’s “Back When the Tiger Smoked” and Universal Connection
In a quieter corner, I met Folana Miller, director of Galerie Shibumi, seated before Ari Kim’s large‑scale oil‑and‑ink‑on‑wood painting “Back When the Tiger Smoked” (2025). The work depicts two long‑braided nude figures, the larger enveloping the smaller in an embrace. Miller described the piece as a historical meditation on connection, noting that while it clearly portrays human intimacy, the ambiguous forms allow viewers to project various relationships—mother‑daughter, lovers, friends, or even mythic entities. The painting’s tactile medium and timeless subject matter offered a counterbalance to the fair’s more technologically driven exhibits, reminding audiences that fundamental human (or supernatural) bonds persist regardless of the era’s digital trappings.
The Pervasive Presence of LG Screens
Throughout the venue, large LG screens loomed—bright, relentless displays that served both as sponsorship markers and as inadvertent curators of the visitor’s gaze. Their ubiquity made it difficult to ignore the fair’s entanglement with big‑tech interests, and I found myself growing skeptical of works that merely incorporated these screens without offering critique. Yet, amid the glare, the most affecting pieces were those that leaned away from the digital spectacle: the tactile paintings, the intimate sculptures, and the performances rooted in personal narrative. These works subtly subverted the fair’s stated theme by asserting that technology, while ever‑present, need not dominate the artistic conversation; instead, it can serve as a backdrop against which timeless human concerns unfold.
Reflections on the Fair’s Central Question
As I exited, Galerie Shibumi manager Marina Zeballos echoed a sentiment that seemed to encapsulate the fair’s underlying inquiry: “‘What is art?’ is always the question that we’re trying to answer… I think art is anything that a human makes.” This broad definition accommodated everything from Hwia Kim’s eye‑altering avatars to the F‑Twins’ twin‑driven philosophy, from Yadav’s politically charged IV drip to Senga’s finger‑eared FiNGA. The fair succeeded not by providing a definitive answer to the theme of human‑technology coexistence, but by presenting a multiplicity of perspectives—some celebratory, some cautionary, some deeply personal—allowing visitors to formulate their own conclusions about how art, technology, and humanity intertwine in the contemporary moment.