ART-PRESENTATION: Yun Hyong-Κeun

Starting in the early ‘70s, Yun Hyong-Κeun created his unique “Umber Blue” series of paintings. The works blurred the boundaries between ink and oil painting, geometrical and gestural abstraction. His palette was strictly umber and ultramarine, and was diluted in turpentine, which allowed for the paint to wash over the canvas. From the ‘90s, these boundaries between the background and the darkness became more defined, eventually turning into “hard edges” in Yun’s final decade.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Simon Lee Gallery Archive

The exhibition “Burnt Umber And Ultramarine Blue 1990-1993” is the first solo presentation of Yun Hyong-keun’s works in the UK. The series of large “Burnt Umber & Ultramarine Blue” works included in the exhibition date from between 1990-93 and reflect a transformative moment in the artist’s career, when the abstract forms in the work grew larger, darker and fewer in number. The exhibition also includes four smaller scale l paintings from the same period executed on Hanji paper (a Korean paper made from the fibrous skin of the mulberry). His meditative paintings of might call to mind the works of Richard Serra, or Mark Rothko, but his art is inspired by an 18th century Korean painter and scholar, Kim Jeong-Hui. He is the artist of Burnt Umber and Light Ultramarine, representing earth and ocean in his pieces, as nature makes up the main point of his interest, in centuries-long tradition of Asian ink painting. Although there are only two pigments, they allow a great range of hues and provide the work with depth, which Yun Hyong-Keun preferred to call: ”The color of rotted leaves”. In the early ‘70s, when Korean painters first started working in what later became known as Dansaekhwa, their movement didn’t have a name. The Republic of Korea was living under a military dictatorship, everything from educational curriculums to aesthetic norms were defined and enforced by the regime. The new artistic movement was, to put it simply, a challenge to the status quo. In recent years major international museums and academics have revisited Yun’s work and his key contribution to Dansaekhwa. His works characterise the elements of tactility, spirituality and performance common to first generation of Dansaekwha artists, including Chung Sang-Hwa, Ha Chong-Hyun, Chung Chang-Sup, KIM Whanki and Park Seo-Bo.

Info: Simon Lee Gallery, 12 Berkeley Street, London, Duration: 6-29/9/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.simonleegallery.com