Ha Chonghyun

signed in Hanja and English, titled in Hanja and dated 85 on the reverse, framed

Private European Collection

This work is generally in good condition. There are gentle cracks throughout the piece, which are inherent to the medium, age, and the artist's working method. Please note it was not examined under ultraviolet light.
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Shifting Forms and Serene Colours

By now the Korean Tansaekhwa has been extensively covered by various scholars, and has been brought to the attention of a global audience through a variety of gallery shows; most recently, the works of various important Tansaekhwa artists have been exhibited in a dedicated show in the 2015 Venice Biennale. Founded upon the ideals of nation-building, Tansaekhwa artists came about as a reaction to the precarious social situation of South Korea in the sixties and seventies. As they sought to create a distinct national language and form of expression, many artists sought to extend traditional Korean aesthetics while simultaneously breathing new light into already established styles. One such style was the ubiquity of the colour white in Korean culture, most notably in white ceramics and the famous moon jar during the Confucian Joseon dynasty. Although Tansaekhwa artists do not exclusively use the colour white, the preoccupation with monochrome has become a common thread in all of their works, which can be seen in the three following artists’ monochromatic works. The present day sale presents three works of three different Korean artists, Kim Tschangyeul, Ha Chonghyun, and Yun Hyongkeun, each representing their own distinct style but also three distinct decades, namely the seventies, eighties and nineties.

Kim Tschangyeul’s Waterdrops No. 11 (Lot 724), painted in 1977, showcases the immediately recognisable trademark of the artist, and the artist can be considered a precursor to Tansaekhwa itself. The Waterdrops were produced by the artist almost religiously since the early seventies, and the present work can be read as one of the earliest blueprints for a style that would go on to last for more than four decades. The hyperrealism of each distinct waterdrop, paired with the impossibility of each of their inherently perfect formations, as well as their proximity to one another, is in fact a deep meditation on the interplays between the collective and the individual. Coupled with the universality of water as a symbol of life, the Waterdrops series can be read as an enquiry into the potency of the human individual, a reflection extremely pertinent to a movement that stressed individuality and originality.

The emphasis placed on immaculate execution can likewise be seen in Ha Chonghyun’s Conjunction 85-66 (Lot 722). Through exploring the fluidity of paint, Ha sought to capture formal beauty through subtle gestural action. Beginning in the seventies, the artist demonstrated his signature method with a major body of works entitled Conjunction, which employed a technique called baeapbub. This method involved first applying thick layers of paint on the reverse of a canvas, then pushing them through to the other side. Then, Ha brushes or smears the protrusions on the front, creating compositions governed by chance and intuition. This series thus produced works in which the artist’s body fused with the materials he used—a “conjunction” of man and matter. The present lot is thus a meditative outgrowth of this deeply self-contemplative aesthetic.

Yun Hyongkeun’s similarly self-reflective Umber-Blue (Lot 723) works are created by mixing together two oil pigments, namely burned umber and light aquamarine. The quietly and unassuming works of this series in fact reveal an astonishing depth considering their monochromatic palette, and are immediately reminiscent of nature, considering that the artist chose the colours based on organic hues found in objects such as rotting leaves. At once reflective of Yun’s dedication to the Confucian ideal of a “middle way” in both life and in art, as well as his commitment to viewing the act of painting as a simple, ordinary activity that can capture the ebb and flow of life. The results are beautiful and alluring works that recall a steady sense of calm as well as underscore the basis of Tansaekhwa, such as can be seen in Umber Blue.

Among the main elements that identify Tansaekhwa, colour and philosophy are immediately important factors. While the concept of “colour” are not as rigid as in the Western conceptions of it—often the so-called “black” and “white” hues used by Tansaekhwa artists were in fact mixtures of various colours—the philosophy of Tansaekhwa is also not a singular, concentrated formula; rather, it exists philosophically between genres: ink, wash painting, and even Western oil painting. It is this that this interesting amalgamation between forms that has no doubt drawn so many to Tansaekhwa. In its quiet, meditative practices in fact exist myriad threads of varying concepts, thus revealing it an art form of surprising depth.