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Again, we find ourselves putting together a special issue on painting. The concept is a continuation of “Painting: Is It Changing?” from our December 2020 issue, and the keyword this time is “abstract.” We live in a day and age in which the word “abstract” has become ambiguous, yet abstraction does unquestionably exist before us as a creative phenomenon. We recall this abstraction in terms of “painting.” How has painting preserved its identity in the contemporary landscape? How does it respond to a fast-changing visual environment? What are the critical issues in 21st-century painting? Are there any truly new transformations? What distinguishes young painters in their 30s and 40s from the generations that came before them? How has painting incorporated today’s environment of omniscient smartphones? How should we view the future of painting? Art has put together a large-scale issue that asks and answers some of these contemporary questions about painting. To begin with, six experts used “abstraction” as a standard for selecting a group of painters in their 30s and 40s. These experts were Kho Chung-hwan, Kim Yong-dae, Ahn Soyeon, Yoo Jinsang, Michael Lim (aka Chungwoo Lee), and Hyun Seewon. Together, they selected 39 artists in all. To compile images of the selected artists’ work, the editorial board categorized them into four subtopics based on form, content, materials, and techniques. These subtopics are “Flatness and Materiality: The Endless Battle,” “New Abstraction: Meta-Formative-Practice,” “Painting Expands in Time and Space,” and “Beyond the Boundaries of Expression: The Hybrid Forest.” Second, an online roundtable was organized to conduct contemporary painting discourse. There, Kim Boggi, Yoo Jinsang, and Michael Lim examined currents in contemporary art to illuminate the role of painting from multiple perspectives. In the process, they paid close attention to examples of overseas work and painting trends among young Korean artists.

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New Abstraction: Meta-Formative-Practice

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Since the end of postmodernism, where has contemporary art had to search for its raison d’être? At a time when contemporary art has lost sight of the zeitgeist and its drive toward the future, abstract painting has been harking back once again to the masters of past eras. Referring to the formalist vocabulary and history of 20th-century art, “meta-formative-practice” gained a bad reputation among established critics in the art scene as a form of so-called “zombie formalism.” But the history of abstraction that has mediated the digital environment and the contemporary impulse toward the virtually sublime has rendered it both the only surviving source of creation and an unstoppable trend. At a time when the drive toward the future is fraught with frustration, young Korean abstract painters have had to explore new avenues. This section introduces artists who are attempting to reenvision abstract forms and methodologies, focusing on “references” in the magnetic field of the “post-medium.” Lee Sojung experiments with the ink-and-wash techniques of Eastern-style painting as a methodology for canvas-based painting, while Cha Seung Ean reinterprets the formative style of the great abstract artists of past eras through the methods of textile weaving. Kim Ahra transposes the visual features of Korea’s traditional architecture into abstract patterns. Kim Seoul focuses on the brush as a basic tool of painting, experimenting with painting as a self-gratifying, playful protocol. Jo Hyun Sun revisits completed artworks of her own in an experiment with analytical abstract expression. Also noteworthy is the use of digital media for appropriation. Examples include Park MeeNa, who has expanded her artistic world by drawing upon fonts from the computer environment as pictorial symbols, and Yoon Hyangro, who uses screen captures of animated media and the catalogues raisonnés of great masters as her canvases. Jeon Hyunsun juxtaposes images gathered online with triangles, cones, and other geometric shapes to create canvases with multiple flat layers. Other artists focus on eschewing strategies of appropriation in favor of creating unique pictorial styles. Lee Youngjun blends the language of abstract painting with the sentiments of expressionism as he tenaciously delves into the concept of two-dimensional space, while Sung Nakhee visualizes musical rhythms with an formative approach of repetition and proliferation.

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Sung Nakhee, Sequence 11, acrylic on canvas, 65 × 53 cm, 2019, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Sung Nakhee Sung Nakhee uses oil, acrylic, and gouache paint to express abstract forms from within. She paints elliptical rectangles in a spontaneous way, allowing energy to radiate out in all directions from certain parts of the canvas. Her technique of creating transparent layers of acrylic paints in different colors results in the spatial effect of bright light spreading and the visualization of musical rhythms.

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Kim Seoul, Filbert Family No. 4, oil on canvas, cold wax, stand oil, 172 × 172 cm, 2019, Image provided by_ Art In Culture_.

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Kim Seoul Kim Seoul’s paintings are the products of his comprehensive analysis of the tools, materials, and techniques of painting. He produced his series Filbert Family while focusing on the Filbert brush as a basic tool of oil painting. Shapes such as arches, half-moons, and stars are formed on the canvas, reflecting the size and shape of the brush. The artist’s interest in design and architecture has broadened into painting in which he actively incorporates the frame as a design element.

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Kim Ahra, Untitled, acrylic on canvas, pigment, 130.3 × 193.9 cm, 2021, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Kim Ahra Hailing from the city of Suwon, home of Hwaseong Fortress, Kim Ahra has adopted the patterns and colors of traditional Korean architecture as her main aesthetic language. After starting with three-dimensional work in which she applied dancheong painting patterns on canvas frames and other structures, she has transitioned into three-dimensional work in which she applies the methodologies of repetition, juxtaposition, and symmetry in pursuit of the aesthetic equilibrium of the grid pattern. In the words of Michael Lim, she “has achieved a sui generis quality through her understanding of the structures of traditional architecture as sculpture, and her expression of that in experimental abstract painting.”

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Park MeeNa, 111122223333444556677888999 000ㅁㅁㅠㅠㄹㅎ허ㅐㅍㅍㅉㅈㅌ, acrylic on canvas, 200 × 450 cm, 2012, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Park MeeNa Park MeeNa creates artwork rooted in the materials, techniques, and cultural conditions that surround painting. She produces her work by creating a kind of “painting program” that consists of elements such as material assembly, variations on symbols, and the formulation of painting “rules.” Extending both within and beyond the canvas, her methods of proliferation, evolution, and mediation set her paintings apart from others. Her Dingbat series, inspired by the titular symbol fonts used in computer environments, was derived from previous series such as Information, Numbers and Triptych Paintings. The title is itself a kind of code referring to an image on a screen.

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Yoon Hyangro, Canvases , Hakgojae Gallery, 2020, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Yoon Hyangro Yoon Hyangro’s artwork consists of screen captures—freeze-frames of the world. Early on in her career, she was inspired to transfer captured images from animated media and other sources to the canvas, removing them from their associated narrative. Recently, she has approached a change by drawing upon images from art history. Digitally converting images of the work of abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler, she prints them out and uses an airbrush to apply colors to their support frame. The artist herself refers to this as “pseudo-painting.”

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Jo Hyun Sun, Half Moon Index Camouflaged Orange O.S.MB_6, v_5, 7, 8 (6-1~4), oil pastel on paper, 2021, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Jo Hyun Sun Jo Hyun Sun based her abstract painting Camouflaged Orange on her tenacious observation of everyday items and waste materials. This artwork served as a matrix for Half Moon Index_Camouflaged Orange. For this work, she applied a methodology involving zooming in and out and cropping the original image. The overlapping layers of the image have been deconstructed and reconfigured into concise color fields. At first glance, it resembles linear color field abstraction, but Jo does not let go of the delicate painterly nuance that comes from the texture of the oil pastels.

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Jeon Hyunsun, Fog and Horizon, watercolor on canvas, 1 m × 400 cm, 2020, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Jeon Hyunsun Alongside concrete images taken from the internet, the work of Jeon Hyunsun features triangles, rectangles, and cones. As thin as sheets of paper, the layers of the canvas are a reflection of the spatial flatness of the online environment. At the same time, the artist incorporates traditional perspective, accentuating depth and volume throughout her watercolor canvases. With her recent “all over” paintings, the artist has expanded into installations of vertically long canvases. The result is a vast geometric forest.

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Lee Sojung, Giant, gouache on jangji paper, ink, acrylic, 65.3 × 53.1 cm, 2020, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Lee Sojung Lee Sojung bases her abstract painting work on the brush and ink of Eastern-style painting. As she layers sunji (thin mulberry paper) over jangji (traditional Korean paper) and applies red ink, traces are formed from the ink’s bleeding and drying. After that, she creates the composition with oil and gouache paints. This is Lee’s conscious response to the randomness of painting: “I apply control to randomly created images in order to create inevitable paintings—just like all of us have overcome impossibly random odds to be born into this world and become inevitable beings existing in relation to other people and things.”

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Lee Youngjun, Nacht Pinochio, oil on canvas, 130 × 100 cm, 2020, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Lee Youngjun In his paintings, Lee Youngjun delves tenaciously into the concepts of flatness and space. Based in Germany, the artist has combined the sentiments of expressionism with the formative language of abstract painting. He juxtaposes natural landscapes and icons of popular culture with curious spaces in which thin, watery paints intermingle. Lee’s feelings of melancholy during the rural life of his 20s remain a source of inspiration running through his work: “My experience of melancholy becomes a poetic form, overlapping with natural motifs on a single canvas.”

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Cha Seung Ean, TwillStaion-6, cotton yarn, synthetic thread, dye, 162 × 97 cm (partial), 2017, Image provided by Art In Culture.

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Cha Seung Ean For her canvases, Cha Seung Ean fits wooden frames with fabric that she has hand-woven with a loom and thread. Her major was textile crafts. Using the formative qualities and methodologies of work by Korean abstract painters as her reference, she creates work through the application of colors and dyes. She describes the results as “woven paintings of references.” Revealing their threads as the strands come apart, her work contrasts with modernist painting with a “theatrical” quality that cannot be captured from any one perspective.

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※ This article, originally published in the July 2021 issue of Art in Culture, is provided by the Korea Art Management Service under a content provision agreement with the magazine.