Hanji and dansaekhwa make their mark in Venice

Arts & Design

Published: 25 Apr. 2022, 17:10 Updated: 29 Apr. 2022, 16:37

Hanji and dansaekhwa make their mark in Venice

The installation view of Ha Chong-hyun's exhibition as part of the 59th Venice Biennale, featuring Ha's dansaekhwa pieces [KUKJE GALLERY, TINA KIM GALLERY]

VENICE, Italy — The 59th Venice Biennale is a festival for the entire world to celebrate art in the city. A number of contemporary Korean artists are showcasing their works in various venues to coincide with the event. Two of them, Ha Chong-hyun, 87, and Chun Kwang Young, 78, have been selected to hold solo exhibitions as part of the biennale among dozens of international artists.

Other notable Korean artists, Lee Kun-yong, 80, Park Seo-bo, 90, and Haegue Yang, 51, are also holding exhibitions, either solo or as part of a group.

The collaboration of Korean artworks with old Venetian buildings that breathe with history is something unexpected but elicits a beauty that proves Korean art truly shines, no matter the setting.

Another view of Ha's exhibition [KUKJE GALLERY, TINA KIM GALLERY]

Ha Chong-hyun

The first event held in collaborations with the Venice Biennale is a retrospective of Ha, located at the Palazzetto Tito. The master of dansaekhwa, or Korean abstract monochrome paintings, looks back at the past 60 years of his artistic career, with 20 pieces encompassing both old works and new ones made specially for this exhibition.

The exhibition was curated by Kim Sun-jung, the artistic director of the Art Sonje Center in Jongno District, central Seoul, and hosted by the La Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa of Venice, Kukje Gallery of Seoul and Tina Kim Gallery of New York.

Ha is one of a few Korean artists active to this day who has lived through Korea’s post-war trauma. He was one of the founders of the Korean Avant-Garde Association (AG) in the 1970s, which includes other pivotal artists like Suh Seung-won. The members of this association are known to have broken away from mainstream methods and challenged themselves to create innovative art.

″Untitled 72-3(B)″ (1972) by Ha Chong-hyun [TINA KIM GALLERY]

In 1974, Ha began his “Conjunction” series, which was the start of his trademark art technique called “bae-ap-bub” that see the artist pushing oil paint through the back of coarse canvas to the front. He also utilized barbed wire and springs, or even burned the surface of the canvas to create dark tones.

“Untitled 72-3(B)” (1972), on display at the Venice building, shows Ha’s experimentation with springs on a black panel.

Ha’s “Post-Conjunction” series, which was created in the early 2010s, slightly differs from the original series in terms of color and technique. It features more pops of color and was produced by placing planks of wood wrapped in canvas cloth on top of wet paint, causing the paint to be pressed through the gaps of the planks. Pieces like “Post Conjunction 10-2” (2010) should be examined up close to get a better understanding of how the paint was applied.

″Conjunction 22-01″ (2022) by Ha Chong-hyun [KUKJE GALLERY]

His latest “Conjunction” paintings, produced from 2020, show how deeply Ha contemplated on the layering of paint on the canvas and its properties. For "Conjunction 22-01" (2022), Ha pressed white paint from the back of the canvas and layered blue paint on top, creating an image of a sky, curator Kim explained on Thursday.

Ha’s retrospective continues until Aug. 24.

“Aggregation 15-JL038” (2015), right, and “Aggregation 22-JA007 (Star 1)” (2022) [SHIN MIN-HEE]

Chun Kwang Young

In Chun’s retrospective “Times Reimagined,” hanji, or Korean traditional mulberry paper, is the star of the show. The artist is renowned for using this stunning handmade material, which is known to be tough and does not rip easily, and dying it various colors using natural substances like tea, before folding it into triangular prism-like fragments.

It is being held at the Palazzo Contarini Polignac and was curated by Lee Yong-woo.

What seems like millions of these pieces then become parts of huge mushroom-like sculptures, virus-shaped sculptures or rocky reliefs, and they are all titled “Aggregation.”

“Aggregation 15-JL038” (2015) and “Aggregation 22-JA007 (Star 1)” (2022) are located in a dark room. The former has a speaker inside, playing the sound of a heart beating irregularly, representing an unhealthy, fragile heart “suffering from polluted air.” The latter installation piece, on the other hand, symbolizes a healthy counterpart with its bright, piercing red color.

The exterior of ″Hanji House," which is part of Chun Kwang Young's exhibition [CKY STUDIO, ALICE CLANCY]

Chun’s show offers a time of healing and unwinding, as also depicted in “Hanji House,” a separate white building right outside the venue, shaped like — you guessed it — his triangular hanji packages. Made in collaboration with Italian architect Stefano Boeri's studio team Stefano Boeri Architetti, it is offered as a meditative environment, thanks to an immersive video resembling outer space in which Chun’s floating hanji pieces represent stars, along with soothing music.

“Times Reimagined” runs through Nov. 27.

Lee Kun-yong's ″Bodyscape″ series on display at the Palazzo Caboto [GALLERY HYUNDAI]

Lee Kun-yong

The Gallery Hyundai of Seoul presents Lee’s famous “Bodyscape” pieces at the Palazzo Caboto, for his solo exhibition of the same name. In "Bodyscape," Lee, who is known for his performance art, shows off various hearts, angelic figures and pieces featuring vertical lines.

In this series Lee paints without looking at the canvas. He revealed that he only draws as far as his own arm can reach or body can move on the canvas. Sometimes he even restricts his own body’s range of movement, by wrapping a cast around his forearm so he is unable to bend it while painting.

Lee Kun-yong's ″Bodyscape″ series on display at the Palazzo Caboto [GALLERY HYUNDAI]

The process serves as an “expression of the body.”

“It is to represent the process through which my body perceives the two-dimensional surface, via lines drawn by the movements by the arm,” Lee was quoted as saying by the gallery.

In his heart-depicting pieces like the recently created “Bodyscape 76-3-2022” (2022), Lee stands on his side and paints half of the heart in one full brushstroke by circling his entire arm. He continues the process with different colors and then changes direction to draw the other half.

“Bodyscape” ends July 3.

The installation view of the joint exhibition of Danh Vo, Isamu Noguchi and Park Seo-bo. Here shows a room with Park's dansaekhwa pieces on the wall and Noguchi's "Akari" light sculptures on the ceiling. [WHITE CUBE]

Park Seo-bo

Park is another artist renowned for dansaekhwa, and is exhibiting his works alongside the Danish-Vietnamese artist Danh Vo, 46, and American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia.

The group exhibition was organized by White Cube, an art gallery based in London, and curated by Vo and Chiara Bertola, a Venice-based curator.

Park is one of the first generation modern artists in Korea, his signature work being the “Ecriture” series of paintings, made by incising thin repetitive pencil lines with oil paints on canvas, illustrating the minimalism yet deepness shown by layering of the patterns.

″Ecriture No. 220117″ (2022) by Park Seo-bo [PARK SEO-BO]

The three artists collectively display their works throughout this historic Venetian building. Park’s works are mostly on the third floor.

“Park’s refined material vocabulary and calligraphic idioms share a sentiment with both Noguchi’s paper ‘Akari’ lamps and the penmanship of [Vo’s father] Phung Vo,” White Cube explained.

The group exhibition runs until Nov. 27.

Haegue Yang's digitally-printed wallpaper piece “Incantations - Entwinement” (2022) [SHIN MIN-HEE]

Haegue Yang

As part of French curator Nicolas Bourriaud’s three-part exhibition at Palazzo Bollani, Yang is grabbing viewers’ attention with her new wallpaper piece “Incantations – Entwinement” (2022). This digitally-printed self-adhesive vinyl film is splashed onto a room of the venue with images of snakes, bells, DNA molecules and geometric patterns on a forest background.

The exhibition is titled “Planet B, Climate Change and the New Sublime” and reflects on artists’ interpretation of climate change. Yang’s wallpaper is included in the first part, “Every Exhibition is a Forest,” which continues through June 26.

Yang, based in Berlin and Seoul, incorporates historical and folk elements into her abstract art pieces, which range from paper collages to large-scale installations.

“Planet B, Climate Change and the New Sublime” ends Nov. 27.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]