Seo-Bo Park

Art Brokerage: Seo-Bo Park Korean Artist: b. 1931. Since beginning his artistic career in the 1950s, Seo-Bo Park has been at the forefront of contemporary Korean art. He is considered his country's preeminent artist, credited with introducing Modernism to Korean art. Park's innovative combination of traditional Korean sensibility with the Western abstract art movements of Minimalism, Art Informel, and Color Field painting has made him an influential figure to generations of Korean artists. Through a labor-intensive, multi-step process, the artist creates Minimalist paintings with complexly textured surfaces. Several layers of mulberry paper – known in Korea as hanji – acrylic paint, and ink are built up onto each canvas. Before the layers dry, Park uses a pencil or a narrow bamboo stick to incise thin parallel lines across the entire surface. In each painting, rectangular spaces are strategically carved away, revealing a vivid under layer of paint and creating what Park calls "Breathing Spaces" amidst the sea of lines. In keeping with Park's understated style, these new works juxtapose pattern and emptiness, restrained form and exuberant color, and Eastern and Western aesthetics. Park's work has been on view throughout Asia, Europe and the U.S. for more than fifty years. Among his retrospective exhibitions is, Seo-Bo Park's Paintings: Its Forty Years, at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul in 1991. He has received numerous awards, such as The National Medal of Korea (The Medal of Seokryu) in 1987, The Order of Cultural Merits, Korea in 1994, and the Seoul Metropolitan Cultural Award in 1995. His work is in the collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; The Seoul Museum of Art; The Contemporary Museum of Hongik University, Seoul; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, France. In 1994 he founded the Park, Seo-Bo Art and Cultural Foundation. Listings wanted.