Dansaekhwa meets minimalism

An installation view of the exhibition “EMBRACING: Yun Hyong-keun with Chusa and Donald Judd” at PKM Gallery in central Seoul / Courtesy of PKM Gallery

Exhibition highlights

Yun, Kim, and Judd

By Kwon Mee-yoo

Caligrapher and scholar Kim Jeong-hui (1786-1856) from the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), Korean dansaekhwa artist Yun Hyong-keun (1928-2007) and American artist Donald Judd (1928-1994) don't seem to have anything in common with each other ― except that they are artists who have become recognized for their work.

"EMBRACING: Yun Hyong-keun with Chusa and Donald Judd," an exhibition at PKM Gallery in downtown Seoul, sheds light on the three artists in an attempt to contextualize Yun in art history.

Yun is one of the leading artists of the recently rediscovered Dansaekhwa, or Korean monochrome movement. Inspiration for Yun's work came from nature ― the artist realized the magnitude of nature through seeing a rotting tree returning to dust. He mainly used hemp and linen instead of traditional canvas and created wide paintings painted using thick brushstrokes in a single color, mostly burnt umber or ultramarine.

Yun had a posthumous solo exhibit at New York’s Blum & Poe Gallery last November and at the Antwerp-based Axel Vervoordt Gallery earlier this year. His work has been well-received at some of the world’s major art fairs such as Art Basel Hong Kong and the Frieze Masters in London.

Yun said of Kim, better known by his pen name Chusa, that his work influenced his art. Kim is the creator of his signature calligraphic style "Chusa-che," which is celebrated for its balanced structure and use of margins.

Donald Judd's "89-32" (1989) / Courtesy of PKM Gallery

The exhibit displays Yun's works on brownish hemp with Chusa's writings, also on similar earth colored papers, discovering the similarities between Yun's simple yet profound brushstrokes and Chusa's calligraphic lines in the viewers’ minds.

American minimalism artist Judd, though he denied being a minimalist, used steel and wood in regular intervals to create a unique sense of space.

Judd and Yun were born in the same year, coincidently, but that is not all they had in common. Judd was one of the first Westerners who noticed Yun's restrained elegance. In the early 1990s, Judd visited Korea for a solo exhibition and was fascinated by Yun's work. Later in 1994, Judd invited Yun for an exhibition at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, which is a contemporary art museum founded by Judd.

Both of them explored the fundamentals of geometry through the simplest forms

Kim Hyun-sook, art critic and professor at the Sung Kyun Kwan University graduate school, said the similarity between Judd's "Specific Objects" and Yun's dark brown painting goes beyond the simple idea of uniform rectangular arrangements to one of structural expression about questions of life and death, humanity and nature, time and space and moment and eternity.

"The Chusa-Yun-Judd puzzle, which transcends time and region and suggests an implicit dialogue among the artists beyond the dimension of impression at the dimension of intellect, presents an extremely fresh and interesting case," Kim said.

The exhibition is on view through April 18 at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m from Monday to Saturday, and can also be visited by reservation. Admission is 10,000 won. For more information, call 02-734-9467 or visit www.pkmgallery.com.