ARTMS

Out of LOONA, by way of the courts

ARTMS is what happened after five members of LOONA stopped being LOONA. The contracts came apart in stages. Kim Lip, JinSoul and Choerry had their exclusive deals with BlockBerry Creative terminated on 13 January 2023. On 16 June 2023 the civil affairs department of the Seoul High Court ruled in favour of HaSeul and four other members who had sued to suspend theirs, finding fault with the label's decision to transfer the group's contracts to Universal Japan without the members' consent. The members marked the ruling on Instagram rather than in press statements.

The dozen split along legal lines. Kim Lip, JinSoul and Choerry signed with Modhaus on 17 March 2023, a company founded by Jaden Jeong, formerly LOONA's creative director. HeeJin signed too, and HaSeul joined in June 2023. Five of the remaining members went to CTDENM and debuted separately as Loossemble. Modhaus branded everything the five did together as the ARTMS project, the name pulled from Artemis, the Greek moon goddess, and from NASA's lunar programme, and framed as a twist on the word divine.

Version Up first, then a debut album

The first record under the new label came out under an old name. Odd Eye Circle, the trio of Kim Lip, JinSoul and Choerry, had debuted as a LOONA sub-unit on 21 September 2017 with the EP Mix & Match. Their second EP, Version Up, arrived on 12 July 2023, entering the Circle album chart at six on 72,669 copies. Touring followed quickly and cheaply: Europe in August 2023, North America across January and February 2024, Japan that same February. It established a pattern the group has not abandoned — small rooms, many of them, booked back to back.

The full five-member debut came on 31 May 2024. DALL ran eleven tracks in just over half an hour, released by Modhaus with Kakao Entertainment. Four singles cleared the ground first: "Birth" on 29 March, "Flower Rhythm" on 11 April, "Candy Crush" on 25 April and "Air" on 10 May. The lead single "Virtual Angel" arrived with the album itself. DALL peaked at seven on Circle's Korean album chart and seven on Billboard's World Albums listing, selling 112,605 copies. Billboard ranked it twelfth on its best K-pop albums of 2024 and placed "Virtual Angel" ninth among the year's songs.

Club Icarus, then Hyper-Ego

The first mini album, Club Icarus, followed on 13 June 2025. It reached six in Korea and shifted 152,572 copies, still the group's best-selling record. The touring cycle that came with it was heavier than anything Odd Eye Circle had attempted: Moonshot in 2024, Lunar Theory in 2025, then Grand Club Icarus running across 2025 and into 2026.

Hyper-Ego, the second mini album, landed on 7 August 2026 with two title tracks rather than one, "Born Stunner" and "Blue Blood". It peaked at nine in Korea on 75,949 copies, the lowest chart position and the smallest sales figure of the three full releases, though it arrived without the member who has historically opened their records. The intro track, "From Wing to Soul", is narration rather than a song, and HaSeul recorded it.

Speaking on release day, Kim Lip framed that decision as deliberate rather than sentimental: because it was an album the five of them would eventually release together, they treated it as something all five had to be on. JinSoul said the narration surprised them, and that it was a relief — they had expected HaSeul to find the whole thing too disappointing to take part in at all.

One member off the road

HaSeul has a long-standing shoulder injury. Kim Lip's account is blunt: HaSeul kept putting the surgery off until putting it off stopped being an option. Modhaus confirmed during 2026 that she would sit out both the Hyper-Ego promotions and the world tour, and ARTMS has promoted and toured as four since. JinSoul, asked about the recovery in August, said HaSeul cannot raise her arm post-operation, which rules out performing, but moves normally in everyday life.

The hiatus has not been silent. HaSeul released "Again" in June 2026, a collaboration with the composer Kim Hyung-suk, and the single "Afterglow" on 8 September 2026, two days after the Seoul shows finished without her. Modhaus has said a solo single album and her own concert are planned once she is fully recovered, with small-theatre dates the likely format. This is her second extended absence; she stepped back from January 2020 to May 2021 with anxiety.

It leaves ARTMS in an unusual position for a group this small — a permanent five-piece that has now built an album, a promotional cycle and a nineteen-date tour around four bodies on stage, without replacing the fifth or pretending she is not there.

Nineteen nights, Seoul to Budapest

The Art of BLUE BLOOD tour was announced on 10 July 2026, four weeks before the album it supports. Nineteen shows were confirmed at announcement, running from 5 September to 29 November 2026: two nights in Seoul, ten North American cities through October, seven European cities in November, with Modhaus indicating further stops were still to come. It is the group's fourth world tour in three years.

The North American leg opens in Toronto on 5 October at the Danforth Music Hall, then New York on the 7th, Orlando on the 10th, Grand Prairie on the 13th, Denver's Summit Music Hall on the 15th, Los Angeles on the 18th, San Francisco on the 20th, House of Blues in Las Vegas on the 23rd, Seattle on the 25th and Vancouver's Vogue Theatre on the 27th. Europe follows with Lille on 16 November, Maastricht on the 19th, Arnhem on the 20th, Helsinki on the 22nd, Berlin on the 25th, Warsaw on the 27th and Budapest on the 29th.

The venue list is the tell. These are theatres and clubs, not arenas, and the Seoul nights were at YES24 Live Hall rather than a larger hall — a routing built around the number of cities reached rather than the size of the rooms.

Opening night in Seoul

The tour started at YES24 Live Hall on 5 and 6 September 2026. The first night opened on a video segment titled Art of BLUE and went straight into "Hyper Crush", "BURN" and a demo version of "Blue Blood", which drew the loudest response of the early run. Korean coverage of the two nights singled out the production — stage set pieces, lasers and air shots — and the way four members had to carry a show designed for five, both as individuals and as a unit.

The solo block did most of that work. HeeJin played guitar on "sAvioR", Kim Lip took LOONA's "Twilight", Choerry took "Eclipse" and JinSoul took "Singing in the Rain". Pairings filled the gaps: HeeJin and Kim Lip on "Be Natural", the S.E.S. song Red Velvet later debuted with, and JinSoul and Choerry on Abir's "Tango".

Closing the second night, the group thanked the audience for finishing the Seoul run "amid your passionate cheers and support", and left the concept deliberately unresolved: they had shown diverse faces of BLUE, and would leave the meaning to the people watching. Reviewers described the final song as the point where the room and the stage stopped being separate.