ART-PRESENTATION: Park Seo-Bo

Park Seo-Bo is considered one of the leading figures in bringing the European Modernist concept of art to Korea in the late ‘50s after the Korean War. The expressionist tendency at that time was partially influenced by French l’art informel in an attempt to bring Eastern calligraphy into contact with Western forms.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: White Cube Gallery Archive

Over the years, Park Seo-Bo Park has refined and developed his methods as a painter in order to retrieve his identity again as a Korean artist and to reintegrate Buddhist and Taoist ideas into his work. “Ecriture 1967-1981” is the first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom of the Korean artist Park Seo-Bo. He has been most closely identified as a major figure in the Korean Monochrome (Dansaekhwa) movement, which also included artists such as Lee Ufan and Ha Chong Hyun. In developing a notion of Modernism in Korean Art, Park Seo-Bo and his contemporaries took their cues from America and France rather than Japan, whose cultural influence in Korea had waned since the dissolution of the empire. He is best known for his “Ecriture” series of paintings which he began in the late ’60s. This exhibition traces the origins of these works and includes 16 paintings made between 1967–81. The early “Ecriture” works, executed on cloth or paper, involve layers of milky white or pale gray paint over which Park has drawn repetitive, unidirectional pencil lines. He has said that the repetitive gestures and monochromatic environments of these works are a way of emptying the painting of the self, and achieving a unity with the nothingness in nature. However, the title of the series refers to writing, an inherently individualistic act. The paintings demonstrate the persistence of the monochrome since, despite these regular incisions into the white paint, from a distance they appear to be only one color, or perhaps, an empty painting. Park’s use of white is fundamental, since it acts as a signifier of immateriality in Korea, often representative of sun and light. Conceived in a fleeting moment, Park’s calligraphic marks reflect his interest in reaching a sense of emptiness, an attempt that is made afresh with each new painting.

Info: Curator: Katharine Kostyal, White Cube Gallery, 25 – 26 Mason’s Yard, London, Duration: 15/1-12/3/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://whitecube.com