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Collection
Écriture No.20-22
Seo-Bo Park
Work Description
- Media Korean traditional paper Hanji fiber casted in a silicon gel mold and finished by airbrushing and hand-colouring (Edition 30)
- Location THE GRAND LOTTE SEOUL
This work clearly and elegantly presents the aesthetics of “repetition” and “emptiness,” central to Park Seo-Bo’s visual language. The yellow vertical lines filling the surface repeat in a steady rhythm, evoking traces of time accumulated through a meditative, performative act. Their regular flow guides the viewer’s gaze up and down, creating a quiet tension and contemplative resonance.
The white rectangular space at the center is not merely a blank area, but a “vacated place” revealed through repetition. Set within the dense field of lines, this void heightens the surrounding color and rhythm, symbolically reflecting Park Seo-Bo’s world, where fullness and emptiness, density and silence coexist.
The bright, warm yellow brings vitality and a sense of light to the work. Yet rather than asserting itself forcefully, it quietly expands through restraint and balance. The piece directs attention from color to action, and from form to spiritual attitude, conveying the depth of Korean Dansaekhwa with a modern sensibility.
The white rectangular space at the center is not merely a blank area, but a “vacated place” revealed through repetition. Set within the dense field of lines, this void heightens the surrounding color and rhythm, symbolically reflecting Park Seo-Bo’s world, where fullness and emptiness, density and silence coexist.
The bright, warm yellow brings vitality and a sense of light to the work. Yet rather than asserting itself forcefully, it quietly expands through restraint and balance. The piece directs attention from color to action, and from form to spiritual attitude, conveying the depth of Korean Dansaekhwa with a modern sensibility.
About the Artist
Seo-Bo Park, a master of Korean Dansaekhwa, embodied six decades of Korean contemporary art through his practice. At a time when state-sponsored academic art dominated the Korean art scene, Park emerged as a rebellious figure with his Primordialis series, reflecting the anguish of humanity after the war through the spirit of the Informel movement.
In the mid-1960s, he explored the Hereditarius series, combining Korea’s traditional five cardinal colors with geometric abstraction amid rapid urbanization and industrialization. His renowned Ecriture series embodies the Eastern philosophy of self-emptying through repetition. While early works centered on repeated pencil lines, his post-1980s works incorporated hanji paper, unifying gesture and materiality so that the paper itself could come forward. Park is widely recognized as a pioneer who elevated Korean aesthetics into modern abstract art within global contemporary art history.
His works are held in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Leeum Museum of Art, and Busan Museum of Art, as well as major international institutions including MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou.
In the mid-1960s, he explored the Hereditarius series, combining Korea’s traditional five cardinal colors with geometric abstraction amid rapid urbanization and industrialization. His renowned Ecriture series embodies the Eastern philosophy of self-emptying through repetition. While early works centered on repeated pencil lines, his post-1980s works incorporated hanji paper, unifying gesture and materiality so that the paper itself could come forward. Park is widely recognized as a pioneer who elevated Korean aesthetics into modern abstract art within global contemporary art history.
His works are held in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Leeum Museum of Art, and Busan Museum of Art, as well as major international institutions including MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou.
Seo-Bo Park (1931~2023, Republic of Korea)
B.A in Painting, College of Fine Arts, Hong-Ik University
