ART CITIES:London-Ha Chong Hyun

Ha Chong-Hyun came to prominence with his Conjunction series in the early 1970s. These early experiments have led him to build his signature style, pushing the paint from the back to the front of hemp cloth. As a leading member of the movement known as Dansaekhwa, or “monochrome painting”, he has consistently used material experimentation and innovative studio processes to redefine the role of painting, playing a significant role bridging the avant-garde traditions between East and West.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Almine Rech Gallery Archive

Committed to redefining modern art and rejecting mainstream academic trends, Ha Chong-Hyun developed a process that converted physically demanding studio processes into abstract compositions. In his most recent work that is on presentation at Almine Rech Gallery in London Ha has expanded upon his practice of transforming three-dimensionality into a two dimensional surface by experimenting with new ways to add materiality and a sense of volume to color. As is the case with anything revolutionary, the “Conjunction” paintings, the first of which was begun in 1973 and made public in 1974, represent a paradoxical process of assertion and denial. In these works, Ha rendered painting, as far as possible, no more than a material fact, simultaneously diminishing the trace of human agency in its creation. In “Work 74-A” (1974), the work with which it all began, Ha placed wooden boards on other boards covered in thick white oil paint, and then pressed down and watched the paint ooze through the gaps. Subsequently Ha would move on to more forceful means of creating these works: pressing thick paint laboriously through stretched out burlap and later hemp, in a process that he calls baeapbub (‘back-pressure method’). If his first “Conjunction: painting relied on a support, in these later works, the support has been denied, and even made permeable. During this time, Ha also denied connections to any Western aesthetics. “I wanted to find a Korean form of abstract art—not the European or Japanese style,” he reflected in the Times. “Conjunction” paintings are rooted in a historical context of competing ideologies., Korea had recently emerged from a more than 70-year process that had encompassed Japanese colonial rule, a world war, a U.S. military government, the Korean War and the beginnings of a military dictatorship. Much of the Korean art world was comprised of artists referencing the academic art scene of Japan, imitating various expressions of what it meant to be ‘modern’ imported from the West, or establishing postwar differences between north and south. Ha’s bold destructive gestures were a statement of independence, of individuality, and of objective and universal truths. The opportunity to explore paint’s behaviour (which can be seen in recent works such as “Conjunction 20-11”  (2020) and “Conjunction 19-06” (2019), the artist has said, has been one of the reasons why he has continued adding to the series until today. Along the way Ha has introduced a greater variety of color to his series, which allows his fundamental processes to work in new ways. “Conjunction 20-50” (2020) and its orange, central motif. And note that while it was created using a single monochromatic paint, being forced through the hemp (which in turn had absorbed it in a variety of ways) and then dripped and dribbled, its hues and densities have been altered and the color has a polychrome feel.

Info: Almine Rech Gallery, Grosvenor Hill, Broadbent House, London, Duration: 6/10-14/11/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00 (Advanced appointments are required email: contact.london@alminerech.com, www.alminerech.com