As market and critical interest in the Korean Dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) movement continues to swell, Dominique Lévy opened the first US solo exhibition of one of its leading figures, Chung Sang-Hwa (b. 1932), at her New York gallery.Jointly presented with Greene Naftali in collaboration with the artist and Seoul’s Hyundai Gallery, Chung’s show consists of two parts: a survey of his career at Dominique Lévy that includes some 15 large-scale canvases dating from 1969 to 2014, and a selection of more recent paintings from 2007-2015 at Greene Naftali.BLOUIN ARTINFO spoke with Dominique Lévy recently to learn more about how Chung’s practice has evolved throughout his career, how this evolution is reflected in the exhibition, and where his work stands in the larger context of the Korean Dansaekhwa movement.How are the two showcases — the historical survey at your gallery, and the more recent body of work at Greene Naftali — meant to resonate with each other? Would you say that there was a dramatic stylistic evolution, or even rupture, that occurred across these two periods?Dominique Lévy: The exhibitions represent a continuation, rather than a rupture: I see them as deeply in conversation with each other. The two recent paintings at Dominique Lévy, from 2013 and 2014, really show how constant Chung’s practice has been. His evolution is marked by patient and thoughtful stages, rather than dramatic shifts.The major shift in Chung’s practice happened when he moved to Kobe, Japan, turning away from tearing segments of paint from the canvas substructure in freeform patterns, and moving towards a more ritualistic, systematic process of creation, incorporating the grid formation.This has been the defining characteristic of his career since, and you see it at play in the paintings at both exhibitions. I might say that the work of the past decade has a greater sense of austerity, and a more pronounced modulation effect, but that's not even entirely true. There is a 1976 canvas in our exhibition that has the same quality.In relative terms, what are the markets like for Chung's historical work from the 70s and 80s, compared with his more recent paintings?There’s a strong market for both, with historical and recent works doing well at auction. We’ve had high demand at both galleries, as well as strong interest every time we’ve brought the work to an art fair — like this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong and Frieze New York.This is something I see as connected to Chung’s rigor and consistency. He’s not the kind of artist that had an early series of brilliant, breakout work that’s prized above everything else. It’s a lifelong exploration of process and time. In terms of Chung's process, what would you say are the most significant parallels — and divergences — compared with, say, Park Seo-Bo or Ha Chong-Hyun?While all of the Dansaekhwa artists were known for their process-oriented work — it was, after all, the hallmark of the movement — in my eyes, Chung’s process is by far the most involved.It requires the most patience; he abandons formal characteristics to process much more than his contemporaries. While other Dansaekhwa artists like Ha Chong-Hyun employed similar techniques, Chung was singular in his ritualistic and systematic approach. Chung’s process is so deeply temporal that it becomes an act of contemplation, of meditation, and that is as much his work as the canvas itself.Your gallery has also recently become an avid promoter of Japanese Gutai artists such as Kazuo Shiraga. Although the "hot" expressionism of Gutai is often seen at odds with the "cooler" precision of Korean Dansaekhwa, do you find any thematic or conceptual affinities between these two movements?Yes, there are rich conceptual similarities in relation to the historical moment. It is my hope that there will be a major museum retrospective of Dansaekhwa artists within the next few years — much like the “Gutai: Splendid Playground” exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2013 — to increase visibility for these artists, and to also contextualize Korean art within the international postwar moment.It was an incredibly turbulent time, and Korean artists were reacting with that same spirit of struggle and innovation that you see in Gutai. There was tumultuous political upheaval in Korea after the Korean War in 1953, and continuing until 1988.Korean postwar art is thematically similar to Zero in Europe, to Gutai in Japan, and to Abstract Expressionism in the United States. All of these artists were grappling with ideas of representation and surface, of breaking with tradition, of dealing with tragedy, but working through these ideas using different cultural traditions and lineages.The Chung Sang-Hwa exhibition runs at Dominique Lévy New York through July 30, 2016.
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