Major Retrospective

August 4, 2018–February 6, 2019

Featuring some sixty works and fifty archival pieces, this major retrospective of Yun Hyong-keun’s work at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul explored the life and work of the influential Korean artist who gained early recognition abroad. Although Yun’s work has been exhibited widely, including in France and the United States, where Donald Judd showed his paintings in the early 1990s, this was Yun’s first presentation at a national institution in Korea.

Organized into four sections curated by Kim In-hye, this show traced Yun’s creative development from early works made in the 1960s and early 1970s, to the realization of his "gate of heaven and earth" principle in the 1970s, and the late paintings of the 1980s and 1990s, which represent the culmination of his lifelong pursuit of simplification; a final archival section is designed to provide a window into the artist’s worldview.

In addition to sixty paintings, the exhibition at MMCA featured extensive personal materials that had never before been shown, including early drawings, archival photographs, and excerpts from the diary Yun began keeping in 1975. A full gallery space was given over to a detailed reproduction of the studio the artist used for the last twenty-four years of his life, itself part of the house in Seoul’s Seogyo-dong neighborhood that he had built from his own designs. A recreation of Yun's living room featured a display of related works by artists such as Kim Whanki, Choi Jongtae and Donald Judd, and pieces of Korean furniture, porcelain, and calligraphy as well as personal mementoes that give further insight into Yun’s enduring spirit and creative mission.

Following its initial presentation in Seoul, the exhibition traveled to Palazzo Fortuny in Venice from May 11–November 14, 2019