The Multimillion Dollar Art Collection of Seoul’s Paradise City

There’s a reason why Paradise City is called just that. The resort complex, the first of its kind in Northeast Asia, merges art, entertainment and relaxation over a 330,000-square-metre plot of land 50km away from the South Korean capital, and is meant to feel like a complete escape, an entirely different city, utopia.

With restaurants, shopping options, spas, clubs, carnivals and a casino, it’s hard to believe all of this is just right next to the airport. It’s also home to a multimillion-dollar art collection that’s prominently displayed in all its public spaces. Art enthusiasts can even book themselves in for a guided tour – which we promptly did. Sean Park, collection manager at Paradise City, kindly tours the space with us and shows us seven highlights out of over 3,000 art pieces.

The first piece is Golden Legend by Damien Hirst, a terrifyingly surreal and dominating Pegasus that stands at 4.5 tall right at the entrance of the resort. The winged horse is perfectly split in the middle, one half is in gold, and the other, in true Hirst fashion, strips the horse down to muscle and bone. Park tells us it explores the duality between real and fantasy, and with this piece to greet everyone who enters Paradise City, she hopes that guests can leave their daily stresses behind and fully enjoy the fantasy that the resort offers.

Deeper into Paradise and dangling above our heads is a giant chandelier – seven metres in length and blinding, but to our surprise, Park tells us that the work has no light source. Instead, the work bounces light and colours from around the room, adding a very unique aura to the ambience. The work, called Your Crystal, is by Korean artist Mioon.

Further into the tour, we’re struck Lee Sea-Hyun’s Between Red – 016NOV, which is entirely painted out of one colour and comforted by Kim Tschang-yeul’s hyperrealistic Waterdrops. We’re bowled over by the largest Proust chair we’ve seen – hot tip: spot Alessandro Mendini’s signature on the Paradise Proust chair, which the artist added when he visited Paradise City in 2017. We’re enchanted by Jeff Koon’s Herculean blue-balled plaster sculpture and left self-reflective standing in front of Anish Kapoor’s C-Curve, where your image is distorted and turned upside down against the mirrored surface.

We’ve only covered seven, but there’s so much art to see, it’s a real feast for the eyes. Coming back to Golden Legend by Damien Hirst at the end of the tour, it certainly feels like a fantasy; a fantasy that we certainly couldn’t get enough of.