Currently on view at Blum & Poe New York is a solo exhibition devoted to the late Korean artist Yun Hyongkeun (1928-2007), running through December 23.Organized in collaboration with Seoul’s PKM Gallery and the Estate of Yun Hyongkeun, Yun’s first posthumous one-man showcase in North America includes a highly selective 13 works, focusing on his Umber Blue series, which the artist started in the early 70s. Striking a fine balance between the aesthetics and techniques of oil and ink painting, Yun’s works can be classified as neither expressionistic and gestural, nor abstract and geometric.Using only umber and ultramarine paint thinned with turpentine, the artist layered these pigments over his canvas, allowing them to fully saturate the surface of the support and thereby creating intense fields of darkness. The different absorption rates of each layer by the fibers in the canvas created ghostly imprints and faded, washed-out edges — features that gradually became sharper and more defined as the series progressed.While the Korean movement known as Dansaekhwa has been gaining much renewed critical and market attention in recent years, ever since the landmark survey “From All Sides: Dansaekhwa on Abstraction” curated by Joan Kee was held at Blum & Poe’s Los Angeles outpost, the literal translation of dansaekhwa (“monochrome painting”) fails to reflect the true diversity of approaches embraced by each of its representative artists, including Park Seo-Bo, Ha Chong-Hyun, and Chung Chang-Sup.Ashley Rawlings, co-director at Blum & Poe’s Tokyo gallery who worked closely with Kee on the Dansaekhwa show, notes that Yun’s work is distinctive for the intensity of the optical experience that it offers to its viewers. “One of the things that sets Yun's work apart from the other Dansaekhwa artists is his profoundly nuanced use of color, especially in the later work. Some of the fields of paint are so dense—the layers of color were built up over weeks or months,” says Rawlings.“What appears to be black at first glance is actually the darkest interplay of umber and ultramarine. It's essentially impossible to reproduce in photographs. You have to experience these works in person." Yun Hyongkeun’s exhibition at Blum & Poe New York runs through December 23, 2015.
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