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Artist Chung Sang-hwa in his studio in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, in 2023 / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai
Chung Sang-hwa, a towering determine in Korean fashionable artwork whose meticulously constructed and cracked monochrome surfaces turned the flat canvas right into a signature grid, died Wednesday morning after a chronic sickness. He was 93.
Over a profession that stretched from the upheaval of the 1950-53 Korean Battle to the worldwide rediscovery of “dansaekhwa” (monochrome portray) within the twenty first century, Chung pursued a single query with near-ascetic focus: learn how to push the two-dimensional aircraft past its limits with out ever totally abandoning it.
He discovered his reply not in a picture, however in a way — a cycle of “peeling off” and “filling in,” which demanded each bodily endurance and what he himself described as “foolishly infinite repetition.”
“Performing the identical motion time and again to the purpose of absurdity, that’s what defines my work,” the painter mentioned throughout his 2023 solo exhibition at Gallery Hyundai in Seoul.
Born in 1932 in Yeongdeok, North Gyeongsang Province, Chung entered the School of Effective Arts at Seoul Nationwide College in 1953, regardless of opposition from his household. He initially made a foray into the extremely gestural language of Artwork Informel within the turbulent aftermath of the Korean Battle, channeling the period’s prevailing sense of loss, anxiousness and concern.
It was after his transfer to Kobe, Japan, in 1969, nonetheless, that he started a seek for new stylistic experimentation.
The artist first began draining colours from the canvas, immersing himself within the different gradations of white. However that wasn’t sufficient; he quickly felt the necessity to introduce a higher sense of dynamism and depth to the flat monochrome floor.
His signature method begins by coating all the canvas with a viscous combination of kaolin clay and water. As soon as the floor dries, he removes the material from its body and folds it horizontally and vertically. Chung then peels away the hardened clay and refills the uncovered floor with layers of acrylic paint. This labor-intensive cycle of peeling off and filling in is repeated repeatedly, till an ideal grid lastly emerges — not as a premeditated design, however because the residue of the method.
The ensuing works are thus tactile information of all of the invisible components that went into creating them, from the artist’s each bodily motion to the lengthy hours spent ready and repeating the identical motion.
Chung Sang-hwa at work in his Yeoju studio in 2016 / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai
As he refined the method, Chung ultimately reintroduced a restricted palette of colours like reds, blues and blacks after relocating to France in 1977, infusing his monochrome grids with a renewed cost of visible vitality.
After his everlasting return to Korea in 1992, the artist discovered a studio in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province. He continued to work alone till the very finish, with out assistance from any assistant. “My work can solely be born when I’m alone,” he would usually say.
In a 2023 interview with Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Chung described his work as a lifelong pursuit with out closure.
“There isn’t a such factor as completion,” he mentioned, reflecting on many years spent shifting between Korea, Japan and France. “Artwork, in a method, is about starting one thing infinite. It’s not about making an finish. It’s about doing one thing infinite.”
Main retrospectives of Chung’s oeuvre have been held on the Musée d’artwork moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole in France in 2011, and on the Nationwide Museum of Fashionable and Up to date Artwork, Korea, in 2021.
A funeral service is being held at Seoul Nationwide College Hospital, with the procession scheduled for Friday.
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