Yun Hyong-keun

Name: Press Release
Start: 2023-01-7
End: 2023-02-18
Location: David Zwirner

David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Yun Hyong-keun, on view at the gallery’s Paris location. Paying homage to his brief but illuminating stay in Paris from 1980 to 1982, this presentation focuses on Yun’s paintings and never-before-exhibited works on hanji (Korean mulberry paper) that were informed by his time in the city. This will be the first solo exhibition of Yun’s work in Paris since 2006 and David Zwirner’s third solo exhibition of his work since the gallery began showing the artist in 2016. This exhibition is held in collaboration with PKM Gallery, Seoul, which primarily represents the estate of Yun Hyong-keun. David Zwirner Books will publish a catalogue to accompany the exhibition.

Image: Installation view, Yun Hyong-keun, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

David Zwirner a le plaisir d’annoncer une exposition de Yun Hyong-keun dans les espaces de la galerie à Paris. Les peintures et les œuvres, pour la plupart inédites, exécutées sur papier coréen traditionnel, dit « hanji » (en fibres de mûrier à papier), ont été produites entre 1979 et 1984, période qui inclut le bref mais fondateur passage de l’artiste à Paris (1980–1982). Victime de répression politique dans son pays d’origine (Corée du Sud), Yun Hyong-keun vécut ce séjour comme un moment d’émancipation décisif, associant pour toujours la capitale française à une pleine liberté d’expression.

Location

108, rue Vieille du Temple Paris France, 75003

Dates

January 7—February 23, 2023

Gallery Hours

Tues—Sat 11am–7pm

Artist

Yun Hyong-keun

Press Release

Yun Hyong-keun

Yun Hyong-keun and his wife, Kim Young-suk, and son, Yun Seong-ryeol, Paris, c. 1981. © Yun Seong-ryeol

“I didn’t necessarily go [to Paris] to focus on my painting, or to find exhibition opportunities to boost my career. Paris is a city of art, so I simply wanted to experience the four seasons there.”

—Yun Hyong-keun

Yun Hyong-keun

Umber-Blue, 1979

Oil on linen

20 3/4 x 31 1/2 inches (52.8 x 80 cm)

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One of the most significant Korean artists of the twentieth century, Yun Hyong-keun is best known for his signature abstract compositions.

He is the most prominent figure associated with the Dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) movement—a group of influential Korean artists from the 1960s and 1970s who experimented with the physical properties of painting and prioritized technique and process.

Yun Hyong-keun at his Seogyo-dong studio, Seoul, June 1980. © Yun Seong-ryeol

Yun Hyong-keun

Umber-Blue '80, 1980

Oil on linen

39 3/8 x 25 3/4 inches (100 x 65.5 cm)

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The scarcity of materials following the Korean War (1950–1953) and the country’s relative isolation from the international art world led this group of artists to construct their own sets of rules and structures in relation to abstraction. From 1973, Yun began to establish his signature style, using a restricted palette of ultramarine and umber while working on canvas, a still relatively uncommon material in Korean art at the time.

Yun Hyong-keun

Burnt Umber, 1980

Oil on linen

71 5/8 x 89 3/4 x inches (182 x 228 cm)

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“[Yun] ... built up layer upon layer of paint over several weeks or months. Each layer of color seeped into the canvas or hemp at different rates, resulting in gradations of color and blurred edges. In this way, the finished work became a manifestation of the encounter between different materials, and not a conscious manipulation of them.”

—Charlotte Horlyck, professor of Korean Art History, University of London

Yun Hyong-keun, Burnt Umber, 1980 (detail)

Installation view, Yun Hyong-keun, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

Yun Hyong-keun and his wife, Kim Young-suk, visiting Versailles, Paris, c. 1981. © Yun Seong-ryeol

In 1980 Yun relocated his family to Paris to seek peace from the violent political turmoil that would eventually pave the way for his home country’s democratization. Here he began working on hanji, which furthered and enriched the vocabulary of forms that he had already established.

Yun Hyong-keun

Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981

Oil and pencil on Hanji

37 1/4 x 25 inches (94.5 x 63.5 cm)
Framed: 42 3/4 x 30 3/4 inches (108.5 x 78 cm)

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“Hanji feels right for my paintings because, like cotton, it feels warm, simple, and it absorbs paint well.... Because it’s produced by hand, not by machine, it has a warmth and simplicity that makes it like a work of art. Machine-made, western style paper can’t compete with the natural lines that form hanji paper’s external edges.”

—Yun Hyong-keun

Yun Hyong-keun

Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981

Oil on Hanji

12 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches (31.6 x 23.6 cm)
Framed: 18 1/4 x 15 inches (46.5 x 38 cm)

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Spurred by the Gwangju Uprisings, Yun’s disquietude began to manifest in his paintings: the monolithic bands of paint were no longer completely vertical, but rather collapsing at slight angles. The pillars tilt and lean on each other, or float horizontally across the paper.

Yun Hyong-keun, Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981 (detail)

Yun Hyong-keun and his wife, Kim Young-suk , and son, Yun Seong-ryeol, Paris, c. 1981. © Yun Seong-ryeol

“I spent my youth—my twenties—living in a nightmare.... Maybe that’s why the warm and delicate colors quickly disappeared from my works, replaced by dark and heavy colors.”

—Yun Hyong-keun

Yun Hyong-keun

Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981

Oil on Hanji

25 1/8 x 37 3/8 inches (63.8 x 94.8 cm)
Framed: 30 3/4 x 42 7/8 inches (78 x 109 cm)

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“Drawing comparisons to both Eastern calligraphy and Mark Rothko’s transcendent paintings, Yun’s mature style was the result of a decades-long search for his own voice in a rapidly modernizing country that was actively and violently suppressing its people’s creative expressions.”

—Liz Park, curator, Carnegie Museum of Art

Installation view, Yun Hyong-keun, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

Yun Hyong-keun

Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981

Oil on Hanji

18 1/2 x 24 7/8 inches (47 x 63.3 cm)
Framed: 24 1/4 x 30 3/4 inches (61.5 x 78 cm)

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Making himself at home in Paris amongst his peers, Yun renovated and used a studio that was previously occupied by the painter Camille Corot and gathered with other Korean expat artists of his milieu, such as Chung Sang-Hwa, Kim Guiline, and Kim Tschang-yeul.

Yun Hyong-keun (second from right) with fellow artists at the opening of Moon Mi Aie’s solo exhibition at Foundation Whanki, Paris, 1981. Photo by Park Chung-um

Working directly on his studio floor, he produced simple arrangements of intensely dark, vertical bands surrounded by untouched areas. Favoring the delicate, absorptive qualities of hanji over the commercial papers widely available in France, Yun utilized this particularly Korean material while focusing on this aspect of his practice in Paris.

Yun Hyong-keun, Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981 (detail)

“One thinks of [Yun's] painting less as an exercise in obvious contrasts and more as an attempt to emphasize the places where contrast first takes place: the edges, or the cumulative set of terminal points at which paint stops moving across the canvas.”

—Joan Kee, professor, The University of Michigan

Yun Hyong-keun

Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981

Oil on Hanji

24 7/8 x 18 5/8 inches (63.2 x 47.3 cm)
Framed: 30 3/4 x 24 3/8 inches (78 x 62 cm)

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“Ultramarine and burnt umber combine into a distinctly sweet and mysterious black. You register both tones at once but can’t distinguish them. This feels like a spiritual experience — it pits an intuitive certainty against the inadequacy of your own conscious perceptions.”

—Will Heinrich, The New York Times

Yun Hyong-keun

Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981

Oil on Hanji

18 1/2 x 24 3/4 inches (47.1 x 63 cm)
Framed: 24 3/8 x 31 1/8 inches (62 x 79 cm)

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Yun Hyong-keun, Burnt Umber & Ultramarine, 1981 (detail)

Yun would return to South Korea in 1982 for his family, but his paintings would continue to evince the influence of his stay abroad as well as a sense of the increased stability in his home country.

Installation view, Yun Hyong-keun: A Retrospective, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, 2019

Installation view, Yun Hyong-keun Retrospective, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Seoul, 2018

Installation view, The Myth of YOBAEK, Vacating a Pictorial Surface: Cheongju Writes the Early History of Contemporary Arts of Korea, Cheongju Museum of Art, Cheongju, South Korea, 2016

Installation view, Yun Hyong-keun, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, 1994

Installation view, Yun Hyong-keun, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

Yun Hyong-keun

Blue-Umber, 1979

Oil on linen

59 1/4 x 71 3/8 inches (150.5 x 181.4 cm)

“Although [Yun] has often been called a painter of ‘silence,’ that does not mean his paintings are silent. As a matter of fact, it is often the viewers who are left silent by the torrents of somber truth that his works emit. Standing before his mournful, beautiful paintings, we are stunned and frozen while our heart slowly sinks.”

—Kim Inhye, curator, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Yun Hyong-keun, Paris, 1981. Photo by Park Chung-um

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