ARTIST INFO
MIN Kyoungkap
MIN kyoungkap created a unique painting style whose modern approach is balanced between the abstract and the figurative, but which at the same time retains traditional elements of ink painting. His subject was always nature, the point of origin for his Korean sensibility.
LEE Jonghyup
Transformation 2
1975
Oil on canvas
128.5×96.5cm
Lee Jonghyup’s Transformation 2 was produced in 1976 when he was an active member of 19751225 group, an art collective that signalled the beginning of the modern phase of the local art scene in Daejeon. A large fragmented human body fills the entire space, in which the depressive atmosphere of that time seems to piled up. This work gives us a glance at a page from the history of Daejeon and its art scene.
LIM Lip
Story of an old house
1985
Oil on canvas
145.5×112cm
Friendly Conversation at an Old House earned Yim Lip the special prize at the 29th Korean Art Exposition. Yim used a knife and fabric to scratch into and peel away thickly applied paints, again and again. The calm silhouettes of human figures are a good example of the artist’s early works, which are characterized by a warm atmosphere that returns the viewer to memories of home. Given that the artist was one of the main figures in the 1970s modern art scene in Daejeon, this work is an invaluable material for the study of the history of Daejeon’s art.
PARK Myungkyu
Red and blue
1974
Oil on canvas
72.7×60.6cm (3EA)
In Red and Blue(1974), Park Myungkyu juxtaposes complementary colors frequently employed in European geometric abstraction and uses white as empty space, as is done in traditional brush painting, to give the work its sense of Korean-ness. The simple geometrical forms in red, blue, white, and black—all of which traditionally symbolized different directions within Korean culture—are blurred where they overlap, as if permeating one another, evoking an aesthetics closer to Eastern art than Western. This work is a prime example of Park’s practice from the 1970’s, that breathed new life into the Daejeon art scene and was at the forefront of its modern art movements.
KIM Jungheun
Still standing under a persimmon tree at the Malmok marketplace....
1994
Acrylic on canvas
207×303cm
Kim Jungheon received nation-wide acclaim as one of the main figures in the 1980’s Korean political art movement called ‘minjung art’. His work demonstrates his interpretation and achievement of the principles pursued by art gathering like Reality and Statements. While Standing Under the Persimmon Tree at Malmok Market is a large-scale hanging scroll painting with dimensions of 3(w)x2(h)m² created for a 1994 exhibition held in celebration of the centennial of the Donghak Peasant Revolution. As the head of the exhibition committee, he made several field trips to Malmok marketplace in Gobu where a number of peasants rose in revolt against the magistrate of Gobu. This work is one of the paintings produced during the trips in memory of the peasants, the initiators of the Revolution.
HAM Myungsu
Alive
2019
Oil on canvas
259.1×193.9cm
Ham Myungsu’s produced Alive after moving his studio to a place in the countryside where he had always wished to live, and so naturally it reflects many of these surrounding landscapes. As he puts it, “I painted as my brush led me”, and that he worked following his heart is evident in this painting, which is free from the characteristic brushstrokes that had earned him critical acclaim. While his previous works stand out with tangible forms constituting certain landscapes, this painting shows, instead, a rather flat surface composed of delicate lines that create a sense of gentle movements and life.
PARK Eunyoung
Forest of rebirth
2014
Acrylic on canvas
130.3×162.2cm
In Forest of Rebirth, Park Eunyoung projects images of natural s onto her canvas and draws along the images in a dark room over and over to fill the entire canvas with brushworks. By working under visually limited conditions, she achieves intended effects of accidental bleed and sweeping of her colors. By limiting herself within these specific conditions, she tries to find a point where an artwork can develop on its own. Her work created through this process becomes a type of introspective and reflective monologue.
PARK Hyekyung
Temporal record – recite 01
2015
Acrylic on canvas
112.1×145.5cm
Park Hyekyung’s Temporal Record: Recite-1 visualizes invisible qualities like emotion and memory through accumulated lines of threads. This work began as a means of keeping record; however, one that doesn’t narrate a specific event. Rather the labor and time involved in the work invites the viewer to wonder “What made her start this?” or “What is it the artist wants to record?”. Accumulating lines searching for a certain end, observing the relationship between the act and the time, thinking about a given and keeping that close to herself as she works—all of these processes take on the character of a meditative and even religious ritual practiced in order to relate herself with the outside world through the rendering of her own incompleteness.
JEON Wongil
Botanic landscape-1
2015
Acrylic on canvas, paint marker
160×132cm (3EA)
Jeon Won-gil painted Plants Landscape-1 (2015) is based on a year he spent observing wild plants, which he took from near his studio and planted in pots. During this period he took hundreds of pictures of these plants and made thousands of drawings of them as well. In abstract painting or minimalism, color tends to be more than a mere means of expression. The blue color plane in this painting binds together basic elements of human life such as time, space, land, and living things rendered in the form of drawing. The transparent overlapping of colour and images expresses both their continuities and their discontinuities.
KIM Hodeuk
Rapids
2018
Ink on cotton fabric
160×415cm
Both conceptual and representational, Kim Hodeuk’s landscape paintings draw on the aesthetics of traditional ink painting, but their unidiomatic brushworks and experimental elements break with conventional language of ink painting. Torrents (1990) does not represent water directly, but instead depicts rocks and other details with rapid brush movements and splashed ink stains, through which the fast flow of water is felt. While retaining traditional elements like ink, the ink brush, and paper, this work shows rough and unrefined brushstrokes that make it thoroughly modern in expression, even as it inherits the spirit of ink painting.
LEE Seahyun
Between Red-015JUL02
2015
Oil on linen
250×250cm
Lee Seahyun is known for his red monochromatic landscapes comprised of intricate details. Between Red-015JUL02 depicts seemingly an ordinary natural landscape of mountains and waters, which are, however, painted in red, creating an uncanny sense of tension. The inspiration for these “red landscapes” came from his experience of military service near the DMZ, where he would watch the surroundings through an infrared camera. The skulls seen here and there in the painting directly speak of Korea’s painful history of division and war. Simultaneously, the piece conveys the artist’s memories of his hometown, where the ashes of his deceased mother were scattered. The landscape no longer exists as the area was destroyed during the construction of the Busan-Geoje Fixed Link 2.
KWON Youngsung
A graph of the relationship between the range and the road
2015
Acrylic on canvas
162.1×227.3cm
Kwon Youngsung is interested in s with identical forms and standardized dimensions and translates urban infrastructures like buildings, roads, and parks into pictorial symbols to create paintings akin to graphic art. As a metaphor for the formations and developments of Korean cities, Relational Graph between Intersections and Roads (2015) maps out the relationship between buildings and roads and the arrangements of manmade and natural s within urban space. This pictorial map-like painting allows us to look at our surroundings from a new viewpoint, in a reinterpretation of urban life’s everyday landscapes.