White Cube is pleased to present a major exhibition of works by Park Seo-Bo. Born in 1931 in Yecheon, Gyeongbuk, Park was part of a generation that spent its childhood under Japanese occupation and came to adulthood in the turmoil and deprivations of the Korean War (1950–53). First enrolled as a student of oriental painting at Hongik University in Seoul, after the interruption of war Park resumed his studies in the department of Western painting, then pursuing his interest in Art Informel during a stay in Paris in 1961. Following his return home, Park played a critical role in reshaping the post-war Korean art world as an educator, agitator and organiser. He went on to develop a practice rooted in a spiritual methodology, drawing on Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist philosophy as well as the Korean tradition of calligraphy, and is recognised internationally as the father of the ‘Dansaekhwa’ movement.
‘The sole objective of painting was not to create a beautiful piece, but to attain self-control.’
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The ‘Hereditarius’ works immediately predate Park’s best-known ‘Ecriture’ series. Colourful geometric abstractions, they feature an illusionistic sense of space, layering shapes and stripes in bright red, dark blue, green and yellow, mixed with white, and pairing straight with curvilinear lines or hard-edged with rounded forms. Around this time Park was experimenting with new forms, drawing inspiration from both Pop Art and Op Art. He combines geometric abstraction with Obangsaek, a traditional Korean colour spectrum in which colours symbolise the elements and cardinal directions, signalling his interest in evolving a modernism infused with an authentically Korean aesthetic which was later to inform Dansaekhwa.
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In the late-1960s Park embarked on the series for which he is best known, and which has remained his focus for the past sixty years. These are the works known by the term ‘Ecriture’, borrowed from the French word for writing, though Park uses the Korean ‘Myobop’, derived from the Chinese characters ‘to draw’ and ‘a method’. The artist recounts how he watched his toddler son attempting to form characters on the gridded paper used by Korean school children, in imitation of his older brother. Unable to stay within the lines, the child scribbled over his marks in frustration, then furiously attempted to erase them. His son’s struggles reminded Park of the instruction ‘to surrender and erase all traces of my ordeals again and again’ which had been given to him by the Buddhist teacher Kim Iryeop a decade before. This was the genesis of a meditative practice whereby Park set out to submit his prodigious, restless energy to an arduous programme of spiritual self-improvement, akin to the scholar-monks of ancient Korean tradition. For Park, art is a tool for spiritual development. Executed within a single sitting, harnessing an energy flow through repetitive action, the artwork is not the creation of an image but is the residue of a process of self-discipline integrating action, mind and matter.
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 27-75, 1975Pencil and oil on canvas130 x 161.5 cm | 51 3/16 x 63 9/16 in.
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Park Seo-Bo in his studio, c. 1980. © Korea Arts Management Service, ‘Korean Artist Digital Archive’
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Park’s early pencil and oil paint ‘Ecriture’ works from the 1970s feature repetitive, delicate fine pencil lines incised into a still-wet, monochromatic, pale surface. This action may be repeated many times, each layer partially erasing the preceding one. In some, pencil lines cover the entire picture in an-all over ‘graphisme’ that results in a vibrating effect, their surface suggestive of bristling texture or gentle movement.
‘Minimalism is a term which refers to the act of revealing one’s most efficient self. But I would say I’m rather someone who strives to empty out my excessive self. I repeat similar line-drawing movements for the sake of reaching internal peace.’
Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 15-70, 1970Pencil and oil on canvas100 x 80 cm | 39 3/8 x 31 1/2 in.Find out more -
Park Seo-Bo in his studio, Hapjeong-dong, Seoul, 1977. Courtesy of the artist
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 9-81, 1981Pencil and oil on hemp cloth130 x 162 cm | 51 3/16 x 63 3/4 in.
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‘Understanding the material a painter uses, endlessly conversing with it, and allowing its nature to reveal itself through repetition and long periods of work is the mindset of Dansaekhwa.’
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During the 1980s, Park greatly expanded his abstract language by incorporating traditional Korean hanji paper which is hand-made from mulberry bark. The remarkable durability of hanji has ensured the survival of some of the most ancient scriptures of Buddhism in Korea and, particularly in the west of the country, is integral to the structure of daily life in the form of wall coverings and door panels. For Park, the material not only offered endless opportunities for exploration and experimentation but represented a connection between his work and the natural world which he had begun to regard as essential.
Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 113-87, 1987Mixed media with Korean Hanji paper on canvas90.8 x 73 x 10.5 cm | 35 3/4 x 28 3/4 x 4 1/8 in.Find out more -
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When applied on to a canvas backing and soaked with water or acrylic, the hanji reverted to a pulp that could be pushed and scraped into sculptural forms. Using sharp pieces of bamboo, fluted lead sticks or sometimes just his own hand, Park at first incised multiple zig zag strokes or diagonal lines to create dynamic compositions, adding additional pigment during the final step. From 1997, the ‘Black and White’ works mark Park’s arrival at the technique he has employed ever since; of working the wet hanji into deep parallel grooves and ridges, which he likens to the furrows of a newly-ploughed field. In these works, Park enacts a painterly reversal, allowing the materiality of the paper to speak for itself rather than simply being the support, and for colour to emerge through the space of action. ‘My pieces are products of a dynamic harmony between the material properties of hanji and my Myobop technique,’ he has said.
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Park Seo-Bo in the studio, c. 1990. © Korea Arts Management Service, ‘Korean Artist Digital Archive’
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‘Dansaekhwa means ‘a singular colour’ in Korean, so people regard our pieces as a Korean version of monochrome. But monochrome alludes to a limitation in the use of colour — and that’s a different thing.’
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In the ‘Colour Ecriture’ works, which date from 2000s onwards, Park began using vivid colours, marking a sharp transition from the neutral tones of earlier paintings. This shift in colour palette was inspired by nature, prompted, in particular, by a visit to Japan in 2000 where he experienced the exuberant autumn colours around Mount Bandai near Fukushima. Observing that hanji, unlike Western papers, absorbs rather than reflects colour, in these works, Park handles the paper while still wet and flexible, repetitively furrowing lines into its surface to create a rippled, sculptural effect, with alternating ridges and crevices. Once dry, the main colour pigment is applied over the surface, and the crevices infilled with a shade several tones darker. Taken directly from nature, these colours are vibrant, mixed by Park himself and directly connected to his observations of maple leaves, cherry blossom, jade or even air. Within the compositions, smooth rectangular areas or ‘windows’ of single colour offer a textural contrast and a ‘breathing hole’, to let the mind rest.
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 080105, 2008Mixed media with Korean Hanji paper on canvas180.5 x 300 cm | 71 1/16 x 118 1/8 in.
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Park’s most recent works, the ‘Pencil Ecriture (colour)’ series feature horizontal blocks of pencil lines over a single, pale colour, such as light pink, sky blue or acid green. Thin, undulating horizontal bands and cloud-like coloured shapes of background pastel colour are glimpsed through the space between pencil marks shaped, as always, by an intense meditative focus and by the rhythmic, controlled back and forth movement of the artist’s hand on wet oil with a thinly sharpened pencil. Park regards them as a ‘reinterpretation’ of his earlier ‘Ecriture’ works, but rather than a programme of self-cultivation, the artist’s focus has turned to art’s potential for collective healing, harnessing the therapeutic properties of colour, nature and meditation.
‘My slower movement of pencil tracings overlap on top of one another to reveal the passage of time. Neither black not white, nor vivid, I am enjoying the last moments of my life on a fine pastel tone.’
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Park Seo-Bo making Ecriture No. 190227 and Ecriture No. 190411, in his studio, 2019. © GIZI FOUNDATION
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To enquire about any of the works in the exhibition