Gallery Hyundai will be exhibiting work from Korean artist Suh Se Ok in Seoul this spring, in the wake of a major retrospective on the abstract painter at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA).The MMCA exhibition, which closed April 2, displayed for the first time a collection of 100 works—spanning Suh’s entire career—that were donated to the museum in 2014. Hyundai’s “Suh Se Ok” will present new works from Suh, as well as paintings from the artist’s “People” series.“People,” which Suh created over two decades, represents Suh’s step toward figurative painting. At first glance, the paintings in the series consist of shapes and lines rendered in ink, but on closer examination, a viewer resolves the figure of a person or a group of people.One frequently recurring form consists of two thick lines, more or less L-shaped, twisted together or set across each other. Together, these lines create a sort of stick figure person, its and arms and legs outstretched into the blank white space surrounding it.Suh has been exploring the relationship between empty and filled space, matter and the void, for more than half a century. In the 1960s, he brought this aesthetic approach to the Mungnimhoe or “Ink Forest Group,” a progressive art movement he helped found.The Mungnimhoe style is typified by the use of ink, long Suh’s medium of choice. At its heart, “People” is Suh’s interrogation of ink and its power to simply evoke discernible figures. With his large paintbrushes, Suh seeks to create a human form using just a few strokes. The result raises questions about the relationship—and the dividing lines—between the abstract and the figurative.“Suh Se Ok” runs through May 15 at Gallery Hyundai in Seoul.
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