Park Seo-Bo

Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Seoul, National Museum of Contemporary Art, The 5th Ecole de Seoul, July 1979
Seoul, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Park Seobo's Painting: Its Forty Years, October - November 1991
Busan, Busan Museum of Art, Park Seobo: a Forerunner of Korean Avant-garde: Record his 60 years, December 2010 - February 2011
Los Angeles, Blum & Poe, From All Sides: Tansaekhwa on Abstraction, September - November 2014, p. 102, illustrated in color

This painting is in excellent condition. There is a small and unobtrusive light brown liquid accretion approximately 30" in from the left edge at center, which fluoresces brightly under ultraviolet light. Under ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. The canvas is not framed.
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Across a vast monochromatic vista, subtly adorned with soft textural inflections and the rhythmic accents of the artist’s tenacious hand, Park Seo-Bo’s arresting masterpiece Ecriture No. 9-79 embodies both the meditative aura and the expressionistic splendor that has come to define the Dansaekhwa movement. Embodying the key aesthetic tenants of the pioneering genre, the enrapturing gestural strides that Park Seo-Bo perfects in the present work solidify the significance of contemporary Korean painting within the grand narrative of art history.  As a paradigmatic contingent of the artist’s iconic Ecriture, the present work broadcasts the culmination of a dedicated practice that has gained global significance whilst staying true to the particularities of its cultural origins. Crafting a unique brand of minimalist abstraction Park Seo-Bo articulates a new conception of painting that evokes the ruminative practice of calligraphy, opening up both East and West to an entirely new visual mode.
       In the shadows of the Korean Civil War, Park Seo-Bo’s introduction to painting involved a struggle against adversity while studying at Hong-Ik University in the early 1950s. Nevertheless, bolstered by the tutelage of Professor Kim Whanki and an environment that remained ever engaged with international art news, the young artist found himself amidst the nascent foundations of the Korean Avant Garde. Whilst the artist’s output in the early sixties was dominated by the dark and brooding Primordialis series, by the late 1960s Park Seo-Bo had developed his definitive Ecriture that would form the core of his practice going forward. As one of five artists to exhibit at the seminal Five Korean Artists: Five Kinds of White exhibition at Tokyo Gallery in 1975, Park Seo-Bo was at the genesis of what was retrospectively labeled by critics as Dansaekhwa, which translates simply as ‘monochrome painting’. Historically regarded as the first recognition of the shared stylistic achievements of the Dansaekhwa artists, this show expressed the neutral hues, tactile layers of paint, repetitive patterns and organic abstract motifs that are now synonymous with the term. Painted in 1979 at the refined apex of his technical aptitude, Ecriture No. 9-79 transmits an undeniable serenity that evidences the artist’s triumph over a turbulent recent history, ascertained by a pure and reduced abstraction that manifested the hope and belief in a restored modern Korea.
                Park Seo-Bo roots his intensely introspective methodology in the meditative practices of Taoist and Buddhist philosophy. As the artist has noted: “I want to reduce the idea and emotion in my work, to express my interest in space from the view of nature. Then I want to reduce that – to pure emptiness. This has been an old value that still exists in oriental philosophy where nature and men are one.” (the artist cited in Exh. Cat., London, White Cube, Park Seo-Bo, 2016, n.p.) The Ecriture or ‘writing’ paintings most notably also draw from the Korean tradition of calligraphy. As the highest form of art, the calligraphic tradition holds the aesthetic integrity of legible linguistic signs as paramount to the creation of an ocular experience that is based on both visual pleasure and intellectual nourishment: an expression of the universal life force or qi. With mesmeric effect Park Seo-bo conflates various visual paradigms in the present work: of writing and drawing; of calligraphy and oil-painting.  We witness an entrancing tapestry that simultaneously insinuates the panoramic access to vast geological strata, the regularity of a man-made pattern and the symbolic appearance of text, whilst never settling within any of these illusions.

                The liminal space that these works occupy is rooted in the artist’s method as described by Oh Kwang-Su: "Park took a pencil, repeatedly drawing lines of a particular length. The pencil drawing upon the still wet canvas creates a factor between the tracks where the lines are drawn and the paint that touches those lines creating an inner design echoed throughout the painting." (Oh Kwang-Su, "The Methods and Times of Park Seo-Bo," in Exh. Cat., Beijing, Arario Gallery, Park Seo-Bo, 2007, p. 124) Embracing a free association between painting and language, Park Seo-Bo generates a lyrical abstraction that recalls the vital scrawls of Cy Twombly.  Yet whilst the nature of its execution also points to the Art Informel of Europe and the Abstract Expressionism of the United States, Park Seo-Bo’s exquisitely delicate treatment of surface and the loosely regimented poeticism of his forms forge an entirely non-derivative aesthetic realm that favors judicious peace over unbridled passion. Ecriture No. 9-79 is most crucially enlivened by the dry and varied application of the base layer of paint which leaves raw canvas intermittently exposed. Evoking the off-white color (hi kumuri) of porcelain from the Choson dynasty (1392 - 1910), the picture plane elegantly shimmers with the most acute gradations of light that compose a tranquil mirage.  As writer Soon Chun Cho ascertains, “By moving beyond image and expression, and focusing on the gesture, he learned to control himself and his surroundings. More important, he learned how to extend himself onto his canvas and become one with his work."  (Soon Chun Cho, “L'art Informel and Park Seo-Bo's Early Career" in, Soon Chun Cho and Barbara Bloemink, Empty the Mind: The Art of Park Seo-Bo, New York 2009, p. 20) Working directly into the surface and fusing the distinctions between paint and pencil, Park Seo-Bo creates a calm mantra imbued with his own meditation.
                Yielding a profoundly delicate aesthetic, the intellectual subtleties of these exquisite works were initially less easily received by western audiences than concurrently developing schools of painting from wider Asia, such as Gutai. Today, however, Dansaekhwa is rightly regarded as one of the most important movements of the Korean avant-garde, and Park Seo-Bo as one of its most significant and influential leaders. Indeed, paintings by the artist take pride of place in international public collections including the Fukuoka Museum of Art, the Seoul Museum of Art and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. As further testament to the relevance of his work, the artist’s prolific exhibition portfolio continues to expand, having shown at landmark institutions such as the Musée d'Art Moderne in France, the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York and the Singapore Art Museum, as well as the Biennale in Säo Paulo, and the Venice Biennale.