The process of the intermingling of cultures has happened on a large scale many times before, in the vast migratory phases that have occurred on all continents, over many ages. Now, however, it seems to be becoming global and irretrievable. Whether individual cultures will lose their separate integrities, will retain them at the expense of global engagement, or will find some greater integrity from simultaneous local and global engagements, is the crucial question facing the world today. It will be worked out to an extent through the policies of museums and the decisions of individual artists.
Thomas McEvilley 1
This exhibition, Korean Contemporary Art, is necessarily a very small sample of the practices of vastly larger number of contemporary Korean artists. Sun Doo Kim, Ji-Sook Park, Soo Ryan Song, and Yong Suh live and work in Seoul; Yooah Park lives and works in New York. Regardless of their individual situations of living and working, all of these artists, as indeed all artists everywhere, are within a larger situation in which globalization is increasingly the condition of cultural production, including that aspect of cultural production which is the visual arts. Thus in this respect, at least, this small sample is representative. Globalization is not simply nor necessarily a matter of the universalization of cultural production. Rather, the global exists in tension with the local. Korean contemporary art exemplifies this situation, as successive generations of artists engage both indigenous traditions and the traditions of other cultures. 2
Yong Suh's paintings on paper adhered to canvas mounted on panel have a richly worked surface smoothed by abrading the layers of paint. The building up and wearing down of the succesive layers of yellow earth, stone-powdered pigment and yam manifest the temporal duration of the facture of the works, and is a synecdoche of the diachronic operation of the larger processes of cultural production. Informed by an intimate and scholarly knowledge of historical tomb fresco painting, Suh's works deploy Asian and Western motifs. Or rather, Suh's works deploy motifs with both Asian and Western references and resonances. The flower form in A Song for Ming-Sha Mountain I is universal, while the line emerging from and returning to the lower edge is evocative Susan Rothenberg's characteristic line, though it references no particular painting of Rothenberg's. So also the dark cross form in A Song for Ming-Sha Mountain II, and the dark rectangle dependent from the upper edge of Origin of Karma I, respectively resonant with Kasimir Malevich's Black Cross and Motherwell's Open series. The surface of Yong Suh's works is resonant with that of Leon Golub's paintings. But in saying this one must stipulate: 'resonance' is far from a demonstration of influence, being rather highly contingent on the variables of viewer response.
Sun Doo Kim's works using Jang Ji technique with ink and pigment on Korean paper place figurative elements executed with brush and ink in fields of color, with embedded color areas with additional narrative elements, frequently utilizing references to nature, as in Going-I: At Autumn, Going-II: Another Moon and Going-IV: The Love Song of Southern Province. Sun Doo Kim's humor and wit informs the liveliness of his brushwork, exemplified in the dogs baying at an owl in Going-III: Disturbing Spring. Kim's rural childhood in the southern province of Korea is a perduring source of motifs in his work, which is a giving visual form to lived experience and observation of nature and life.
Yooah Park employs the brush with authority, confidence and grace. Untitled-P1 and Untitled-P2 use hanji, traditional Korean handmade paper, as more than mere support. Rather, inflections of the paper and flax pulp assume compositional functions in a dialog with the brushstrokes, forming an ethereal field through which the variable density of the gestural mark moves. This sense of movement through space is founded in her practice of working observationally from a dancer performing in her studio. Living since 1987 in New York but regularly returning to her native Korea, Yooah Park's works reflect her position in two artworlds. Traditional Korean paper and ink are within a venerable practice, as is an understanding of mark as entailing unity between painting and writing. Yet it is difficult when looking at Yooah Park's work not to think of the work of Franz Kline, though Kline's work is quite different in execution and origin, however the apparent similarity of black gestural mark on a white field may seem.
The elegant abstractions of Soo Ryun Song are evocative of contemplation, a consistent interest in her work for over thirty years. Her work moves from an abstract lyricism in Internal Sight 2A to a concern for clarity of structure in Internal Sight 1. Thematizing intuition, Soo Ryun Song shifts between observation of the exteriority of nature and of the interiority of thought. It may seem that these dichotomous terms are oppositions; they may be regarded as complementarities. Thus Lao Tzu:
Maintaining unity is virtuous,
for the inner world of thought is one
with the external world
of action and of things. 3
The concern for finding an underlying relation between light and dark, presence and absence, upper and lower, positive and negative, ground and figure is evident in Internal Sight 3 and Internal Sight 4, moving Soo Ryun Song's works from the representation of concrete particulars to the universal.
Rooted in observation of natural forms, the work of Ji-Sook Park transforms organic structures into their common underlying processes, thus Organic-Green, Organic- Brown, Organic-Blue. Organic-Green, and Book and Leaf and Blossom I hint at other of her works not in this exhibition, in which the format is shaped and extended in space to become sculptural forms, often of substantial scale.
We are doubly privileged to have this exhibition of these works of five Korean artists, for as their works are mediations of Korean and Western practices, so also in engaging their works, may our practices be.
We are most grateful to Sun Doo Kim, Ji-Sook Park, Yooah Park, Soo Ryun Song, and Yong Suh for graciously loaning their work for this exhibition. I must express my personal gratitude to Sun Doo Kim for his extraordinary and generous assistance in organizing this exhibition, and to my colleague Chong Keun Chu, whose aid has been invaluable.
Sun Doo Kim is Professor of Art and Chair of Painting at Chuang An University, Korea. Sun Doo Kim received the B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Joongang University, Seoul. His extensive exhibitions include one-person exhibitions at Keumho Gallery, Gallery Sangmundang; Park Yeo-suk Gallery; and Keumbo Gallery; Drawing Crossing, Keumbo Gallery; Today and Tomorrow of Korean Painting, Walkerhill Art Museum; Searching for Korean Beauty, Gallery Sabina; Present Situation and Grouping of Korean Art, Gallery Sang. Sun Doo Kim created imitations of the works of the distinguished nineteenth century Korean painter Seung-ub Jang for the film Chi-Hwa-Seon: Painted Fire, for which Im Kwon-taek won the Best Director Award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
Ji-Sook Park is Professor, Department of Painting, College of Fine Art, Hong-ik University, Seoul. Ji-Sook Park received the Ph.D. in Fine Arts Philosophy from Hong-ik University, Seoul, where she also received the M.F.A. and B.F.A. in painting. She has exhibited in eleven solo exhibitions, including Bhak Gallery, Seoul, in 2001, and 1998, and Gallery Shin in 2000, and her first solo exhibition, Making Images, Soo Gallery, 1987. She was the 1997 recipient of the Prize for Young Artists of Korean Fine Art.
Yooah Park lives in New York City. Yooah Park received the B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Ehwa Women's University, Seoul, with subsequent graduate study at Harvard University and Columbia University. She is represented by Andrew Bee Gallery, Chicago. Recent exhibitions include: 100 Years 100 Dreams, Space World, New York; Korean Art-An Exhibition of Six Artists of Today, Korean Room at Korean Mission to the UN; Best Star--Best Artist, Gana Insa Art Center, Seoul; Yooah Park, Gana Insa Art, Seoul Korean Contemporary Art Fair, Seoul Art Center, Seoul.
Soo Ryun Song is Professor in the Painting Department of Chung Nag University, Seoul. Song Ryun Song graduated from Joong-Ang University [formerly the Department of Art, Seorabend Art College], and graduate school of Seongshin University. She has had a distinguished professional career of over thirty years, with fourteen solo exhibitions. She is the 2003 recipient of the Seokju Art Award, and the Grand Prize of the Dong Ah International Art Exhibition. Her work was included in One Hundred Years of Korean Painting, Hoam Gallery, and the Korean Women Artists Invitational Exhibition, Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles. Soo Ryun Song graduated from Chung-Ang University, and received her graduate education from Seongshin Women's University.
Yong Suh is Guest Professor , Department of Wall Painting, The Ccentral Institute of Fine Art, Beijing. Yong Suh reeived his undergraduate education at Seoul National University, and graduate study at The Central Institute of Fine Art, Beijing, China, and did hisdoctoral work in the Department of History. lanzhou University, China. Yong suh's recent exhibitions include: Eternal Flower On Desert: Su Yong Dunhuang Wall Painting, Sungbo Saint Treasure Museum, Tongdo Temple; Beijing, Artfair 2004;. 1997 Gwuangju Bienniele, South Korea.