The Visage of Korean Abstract Painting
This exhibition reflects on the diverse visage of Korean abstract painting and sheds light on their art historical status. Works from the 1940s to 1990s by seven deceased artists who led abstract art in the 20th century are gathered into one place. They are the heritage of Korean art, which shared the colossal wave of contemporary art while also corresponding to the Western formative language. Tradition and contemporary, the East and West, regional specificity and global universality... The fruit of passionate exploration and scrutiny towards the binary oppositions of gravitation and repulsion. It was the fierce "struggle to adopt" that unfolded on this land. This path of self-sufficiency resulted in the miracle of Dansaekhwa winning its citizenship on international grounds. Korean abstract art cannot be fully explained through Western abstract art's genealogy. It can never be confined to a simple equation of "abstract art = formalism." In addition to the form and structure of abstraction, the expression content and spirit of vernacularism, as well as the situation of the times, need to be looked at simultaneously and diachronically.
This exhibition follows the various approaches of Korean abstract painting - the return to form and primitive vision (REE Bong Sang), the pure poetic mood (RYU Kyung Chai), abstract expression of calligraphic impulse (KANG Yong-un), the eruption of lyrical actions (RHEE Sang-Wooc), surrealist mysticism (CHEON Pyongkun), the modernization of traditional aesthetics and Buddhist outlook (Haindoo), and the cosmic order and the light of life (RI Namkyu). Thus, this exhibition throws the following agenda on the horizon of Korean art: What are the similarities and differences between Korean and Western abstract paintings? Is there any family resemblance in Korean abstract paintings, and if so, what is the essence of its formative bloodline? How did Korean abstract painting feed on tradition? How can Eastern and Western aesthetics meet? The questions lead to the fundamental exploration of the "Eastern ways and Western frames" practice of abstract painting. It is rewriting the history of Korean abstract painting with "I" and "us" as the main subject.
Curator, KIM Boggi (President, Art In Culture & Professor, Kyonggi University)
