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*It has been translated using AI
“If you do not change, you will fall. But if you change, you will also fall.”
This seemingly paradoxical statement was a question that monochrome painting master Park Seo-bo (1931–2023, pictured) carried in his heart and wrestled with throughout his life.
It embodies the master’s profound insight: failing to read the currents of the times and settling into complacency leads to mannerism and obsolescence, while clumsy change that one has not fully absorbed can instead cause self-harm.
Should one remain, or should one change? Kukje Gallery is hosting an exhibition that offers a sweeping view of the delicate balancing act between the two. It is Park Seo-bo’s large-scale retrospective, “Changing Unchanging.” Marking the third anniversary of his death, the exhibition presents 40 works across Kukje Gallery’s K1 and K3 spaces and its hanok venue.
The retrospective traces five decades of change, from the 1967 “Pencil Ecriture” to “Zigzag Ecriture,” created with hanji; “Color Ecriture,” begun after the 2000s; “Pencil Color Ecriture” from 2019; and his final series, “Newspaper Ecriture.”
Park Seo-bo’s early Ecriture works at K1 (1967–1986) were made by repeatedly drawing with a pencil over white pigment applied directly to canvas, without hanji. When lines are repeatedly drawn before the pigment has fully dried, the displaced pigment accumulates where the lines bend, structuring the artist’s physical breathing and sense of rhythm across the surface. Pencil Ecriture works from this period command the highest prices among his works.
Park Seo-bo first began using hanji as a material in 1982. He soaked the paper in water for two months, applied several sheets of the wet hanji to the canvas, and repeatedly drew across it with a blunt pencil, creating grooves. He repeated this process.
From the mid-1980s onward, the surfaces developed into an all-over format, with short, segmented comb-like patterns filling the canvas where the pencil marks had disappeared. This was followed by Zigzag Ecriture and Black-and-White Ecriture.
K3 features large, vibrant Color Ecriture works (2001–2018). They use the colors of nature, which the artist himself called “the colors of healing.” During his lifetime, he emphasized, “If an artist pours all of his thoughts into a painting, other people cannot rest in it,” adding, “In an era resembling a psychiatric ward, filled with stress, pain and anxiety, art must be healing rather than visual violence.” Regarding his brighter palette, he also said, “The colors become brighter, but not lighter,” and added, “They must draw people in through the touch of the hand and emotion.”
An unexpected reversal lies in the warmth radiating from the small late works displayed in the hanok.
Pencil Color Ecriture, begun in 2019, is a series that adds richer colors to his earlier Pencil Ecriture. Newspaper Ecriture is a series made by scattering oil-based pigment over old newspapers and then drawing across them with a pencil, creating a softly rounded mood. By leaving personal traces, like entries in a diary, on newspapers that symbolize civilization and contain the record of social change, Park attempted to unite the era with the individual.
Park Seo-bo was born in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang Province, in 1931 and graduated from the Department of Western Painting at Hongik University. After entering academia in 1962, he served as a professor and dean of the Graduate School of Industrial Art at Hongik University until 1997, leading the Hongik school. Regarding monochrome painting, he emphasized “the purposelessness and repetition of action.” He said, “It is like a monk emptying himself by striking a wooden fish all day long. Materiality emerges in the process of painting, and that materiality and spirituality, purposelessness and repetition, must blend together and become one.”
The exhibition runs through October 18.
This article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.
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