[ad_1]
Spring, summer, autumn, winter—few things are more fundamental to how we mark the passage of time. A perennial subject of both casual conversation and art-making, this cycle takes center stage in the exhibition “Kim Chong Hak: Painter of Seoraksan” at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. On the surface, it appears as a simple journey through the calendar, yet beneath lies something more—the fusion of Korean Dansaekhwa painting and American abstract expressionism. By using a familiar narrative while filtering it through a hybrid style rooted in lived experience, Hak demonstrates that meaning lies less in what you say than in how you say it.
Hak was born in Korea, where he grew up and began his artistic career. Coming of age in the 1960s meant grappling with identity and nationhood in a post-war landscape, struggles that shaped the movement known as Dansaekhwa. This abstract, non-objective practice, though not wholly representative of Hak’s influences, dominated Korean painting at the time and provides crucial context for his development.
Dansaekhwa, often translated as “monochrome painting,” is defined by physical engagement with material, deceptive simplicity, and destabilizing contrasts. Its influence emerges most clearly in Hak’s winter works. Untitled (Winter) (2017) depicts a forest stripped of its foliage, the ground blanketed in snow. Only bare trunks and branches remain, save for two birds perched on a branch in the foreground. At first glance, the canvas seems nearly all white, but closer inspection reveals a spectrum of grays—from ash to slate—layered into the surface. Thick slabs of paint have been built up and sculpted with a brush, giving the scene a dense materiality. Step back again and the landscape no longer appears void but alive with presence. What seems at first a quiet winter scene becomes instead a meditation on Dansaekhwa’s influence on Hak’s style.
In 1977, Hak moved to New York, where he encountered neo-expressionists such as Julian Schnabel and Anselm Kiefer, along with the legacy of Abstract Expressionism. Characterized by intuitive mark-making and non-objective compositions that cover the canvas edge to edge—so-called “all-over paintings”—this movement was embodied by figures like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. Its impact is clearest in Hak’s summer paintings. Green Shades and Fragrant Plants (1998) presents a bed of flowers—sunflowers, peonies, lilies—all bursting upward from an emerald ground to fill the surface without pause. While recognizably a summer scene with its dense greenery and saturated hues, the lack of horizon or pictorial depth flattens the canvas into a single, enveloping plane. As with Untitled (Winter), the true subject is not the image itself but Hak’s painterly practice.
What is most striking is how approachable these works remain. The collision of Dansaekhwa’s rigor with Abstract Expressionism’s abandon might have produced chaotic, unruly canvases. Instead, Hak distills these competing forces into the simple frame of the seasons. Though the stylistic influences are distinct, they never overwhelm; balance and clarity prevail. The exhibition offers a dual entry point: first, the comforting familiarity of seasonal change, and second, the conceptual interplay of styles. One may view it as a lyrical stroll through the year, but these works resist categorization. They are not conventional landscapes but something far more compelling.
“Kim Chong Hak: Painter of Seoraksan” is at the High Museum of Art through November 2, 2025.
More exhibition reviews
[ad_2]
Leia Genis
Source link
