Cho Yong-Ik, Olivier Malingue Gallery 2016

CHO YONG-IK

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CHO YONG-IK 5 October – 16 December 2016

143 New Bond Street | London | W1S 2TP

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Olivier Malingue Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Europe of seminal Korean artist Cho Yong-Ik (b. 1934). Rising to prominence in the mid 60s following his studies at Seoul National University, Cho Yong-Ik passed in the 70s to the Dansaekhwa rubric of expression. Presenting a survey of Cho YongIk’s works from the 70s, 80s and 90s, the exhibition explores how he at once championed the movement’s key tenets – repetition, meditation and tranquility through placing the ‘act of making’ at the heart of creation – yet differentiated himself from other Dansaekhwa artists by permitting subtle hints of colour to grace his work and placing a further emphasis on energetic materiality.

On display are a select number of works from each decade, which individually yet collectively illustrate how Cho Yong-Ik followed the Dansaekhwa ethos whilst adding elements of his own. The ‘Jumhwa’ series from the 70s, for example, shows his rhythmic gesturing across the canvas, as he pressed off the top layer of paint with his bare thumb to reveal the alter undertone. Whilst following at times the monochromatic painting values ascribed to by other Dansaekhwa artists, Cho Yong-Ik equally diverted from it, experimenting with dual tones of vivid reds, oranges and occasionally blues. Following through Cho Yong-Ik’s ‘Wave’ series of the 80s and his later ‘Mushim’ series of the 90s, one continues to see this constant push and pull between the monochromatic tendencies of his peers and his more vivacious channeling of the techniques. For the ‘Wave’ series he delicately, yet with great physical exertion and in a single exhalation, whisked at the surface of each painting, creating minimalist, repeated yet ad hoc sweeps across the surface. Suggesting rather than depicting the sea or the ocean, the viewer at once senses it through the works’ gesturality, and is also left to complete the paintings’ pictorial equation both through their physical presence and gaze. Equally with the ‘Mushim’ series, the leaves finely appear on the paper, revealing the textures of the materials used. Although the bamboo-like image is minimalist, two-dimensional and nearly naive, the quality of execution gives the entire series a textural sense of three-dimensionality.

Overall, Cho Yong-Ik introduces an important angle to the discussion surrounding Dansaekhwa: he identifies as such an artist, yet, he distinguishes himself through the insertion of colour. Rather than it deviating each painting’s emphasis on meditation, Cho Yong-Ik’s approach seems to convey the possibility of multiple emotional states, from ones of warmth to others of detachment. As such, Cho Yong-Ik’s work probes us to consider the diverse formal languages of Dansaekhwa and fleshes out, to a greater extent, its associations with tactility, spirit and performance.

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Cho Yong-Ik has been highly lauded as one of South Korea’s most important painters and recently held a major solo exhibition at the Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul. Further exhibitions include the Samsung Museum of Art, MMCA Seoul & Gwacheon, Arko Art Center Seoul and Fukuoka Museum of Art. Cho’s work has additionally been exhibited in various Biennales, including Paris (1961, 1969), Sao Paulo (1967) and is held in multiple permanent collections, including the MMCA, Seoul Art Museum, Samsung Museum of Art and Gwangu Museum of Art.

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CHO YONG-IK: BREATHING COLOUR INTO PAINTING Flavia Frigeri

I initially used fairly bright tones in my earlier works, but then my recent works got a little darker in deep-brown tones. When I make it brighter, then I want to make it darker the next time, and when I make it darker, then I want to go back to brighter tones again. When I make it hard, then I want to make a softer one and vice versa. It is one of the recurring habits of mine. And these days I am drawn to a more regular or irregular work. And I expect outcomes plain and mute, like silence in the canvas.1 Swaying between bright and dark tones, hard and soft edges, regular and irregular forms; Cho Yong-ik’s self-described practice appears to be rooted in extreme dichotomies. Of these polar oppositions, however it is the one between brightness and darkness that provides a privileged viewpoint into the singularity of Cho Yongik’s oeuvre. In fact it is colour, in its varying shades – from dark to bright – that places the artist’s work at one remove from that of his contemporaries. Easing the rigour of repetition, through a nuanced palette, Cho Yong-ik’s work, marks on the one hand a clear departure from the neutral monochromatic tendencies of his Dansaekwha peers, while also treading the line between Eastern and Western artistic production.

Chromophobiac or Chromophiliac?

David Batchelor in his compelling novel cum treatise Chromophia provides a poignant analysis of the contentious relationship that Western civilization seems to hold against colour. Affecting all cultural spheres from art to literature and beyond, Chromophia hinges on the idea ‘that colour has been the subject of extreme prejudice.’2 Loathed and degraded, as Batchelor goes on to demonstrate colour is widely tallied with a ‘fear of corruption,’ which he describes as chromophobia.

Viewed as a perpetrator of culture’s corruption, colour represents a deepseated threat in the eyes of the chromophobiacs. By contrast the chromophile contingency appears unfathomed by the anxiety of contamination, cherishing colour’s infinite subtleties, with its bright and shiny hues.

1. Cho Yong-ik, ‘Artist Statement’ rpt. in Cho Yong-ik: Revealing the Void, exh. cat.

Sungkok Art Museum, 2016. p. 158.

2. David Batchelor, Chromophobia, London: Reaktion Books, 2000. p. 22.

3. Batchelor, p. 98.

While the antagonistic paradigm outlined by Batchelor refers to a specifically Western context, it proves nonetheless instrumental in considering the formal role played by colour in art on a global scale. This is particularly pertinent as the writer makes clear to the art of the 1960s, where the emergence of pop art and minimalism coincided with the reconceptualization of colour. No longer the remit of highly skilled colourists – whose ability to mix pigments is what set them apart – colour was now taken at face value straight from the commercial can or tube.3 Frank Stella had made this clear in a 1964 radio interview, which Batchelor goes on to quote and I in turn follow suit: 9

I knew a wise-guy who used to make fun of my painting, but he didn’t like the Abstract Expressionists either. He said they would be good painters if they could only keep the paint as good as it is in the can. And that’s what I tried to do. I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.4 Keeping the paint as good as it was in the can was the ultimate goal. And ostensibly Stella together with Ellsworth Kelly most successfully accomplished this, along with pop art. Ready made and deadpan, the palette chosen by Kelly and Stella contributed to the flat and hard-edge nature of their work and similarly the raw colours adopted by pop artists like Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist enhanced pop’s ambivalent exploitation of consumer culture.

This prelude into the ambiguous role of colour, offers a means to rethink Cho Yong-ik’s work. While certainly the Korean artist never fell prey to the deadpan ‘can culture’ espoused by the American artists discussed above, his work shows a consistent investment in the conceptual and material properties of colour.

The ebb and flow between light and darkness described by Cho Yong-ik is in fact symptomatic of a complex relationship with colour, finding the artist caught between a state of chromophobia and chromophilia.

Cho Yong-ik belongs to a generation of Korean artists who actively sought to transform the Korean art world in the post-war moment. Abhorring on the one hand institutional conservatism and receptive on the other to Western art forms, with an abstract penchant, Cho Yong-ik together with Kim Tschang-yeul, Ha In-doo, Jang Seong-sun, Kim Seo-bong, Park Seo-bo, Chung Chang-sup and Chung Sang-hwa among others, went on to form the Contemporary Artists Association. A loose alliance of artists, with no explicit guidelines or formal principles the Contemporary Artists Association was soon recognised as a seminal hub for the dissemination of an abstract language capable of bridging the gap between conservatism and modernisation.5 Raised in the wake of the Liberation from Japanese rule, and coming of age during the Korean War (which ended in 1953) Cho Yong-ik and his peers were in search of a language that could reflect the desire for self-introspection engendered by the contemporary political turmoil. Painter Park Seo-bo significantly recalled: The sanctity of life was taught through lessons of blood and the harsh realization of the difficulty of human survival. Youths were filled with a mysterious force of life, and we trained our eyes on the unknown of glory and darkness that one would not be able to taste again. The experiences 10

4. Frank Stella qtd. in Batchelor, p. 98 5. For more on post-war Korean art see: Joan Kee, Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the urgency of method, Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

of war were manifested in a reaction against the premodern and feudalistic elements that dominated the establishment […] 6 The answer to this struggle for survival came in the form of Informel. Partly inflected

by Abstract Expressionism and European Art Informel, Korean Informel (as it came to be known) like its Western counterparts relied on gestural expression as a means to convey emotional pathos. Largely characterized by a rejection of structured formal composition and recognisable figurative forms, Informel placed an emphasis on vigorous gesture and dark hues as a means to divorce the artist and his work from contemporary society. Championed by the French critic Michel Tapié the rise of European Informel was characterised by a shared desire amongst artists to work outside of the precincts of form into the wider realm of formlessness. With only a piecemeal knowledge of European Informel and Abstract Expressionism, Korean artists showed a broad understanding of the Western movements’ formal stakes.

Testament to this is Cho Yong-ik’s earliest body of Informel works. Starting in 1960 the artist took a firm stance against his earlier figurative and still-life compositions and veered his efforts towards abstraction. A palette of neutral and dark hues takes charge of the canvas, while two distinct approaches to the idea of freed gesture unfold at this time. On the one hand Cho Yong-ik strives to develop an idiom of broad brushstrokes geometrically intersecting to form a loose grid-like structure as in ’60 (1960). And on the other hand – as demonstrated by Work 61-901 (1961) – he breaks away from the rigidity of the grid to explore the fluidity Left: 60, 1960 Oil on canvas, 93 × 75 cm Right: 61-901, 1961 Oil on canvas, 100 × 81 cm

6. Park Seo-Bo qtd. in Youngna Kim, 20th Century Korean Art, London: Lawrence King publishing, 2005. p. 205.

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64-10, 1964 Oil on canvas, 35 × 55 cm

of biomorphic forms. This latter set of paintings, vaguely reminiscent of the French artist Jean Fautrier’s Hostage series with its collision of abstraction and figuration, is characterized by a heavily worked surface in which matter overcomes form. The ridges formed by the thick dabs of oil paint enliven the pictorial field, which sways between crests and curves offering a distant memory of shattered bodily forms and ragged shapes in an arid landscape.

By contrast the search for a geometrical orderliness to frame the natural disorderliness of the vigorous traces of the grid-like works, shows an appreciation for Franz Kline’s rushed and rudimentary brushstrokes. Prone to seek a balance between the craftiness of the singular stroke and the discipline of the overall composition Cho Yong-ik, unlike his American counterpart never let’s go entirely of his control; ultimately allowing restraint to overshadow chaotic spontaneity. The biomorphic and geometric tendencies that characterized Cho Yong-ik’s early two sets of Informel works collide in works like Work 64-10 (1964), where geometric structure and rigour disappear under the weight of formless matter.

Marking a significant departure from Cho Yong-ik’s Informel oeuvre is a group of hard-edged colourful geometric paintings from the late 1960s. Like wild cards in the artist’s otherwise linear trajectory, this body of work arguably represents a key node in the understanding of Cho Yong-ik’s relationship to colour. Conceived as a tribute to colour blocking, the artist relinquishes here all prior gestural tendencies in favour of orderly forms. Sinuous waves intersect with parallelepiped forms in 12

Left: 68-77, 1968 Oil on canvas, 65 × 54 cm Right: 68-113, 1968, Oil on canvas, 146 × 112 cm

Work 68-113 (1968), while two profile faces are neatly ensconced in a seethrough cubic structure in Work 68-77 (1968).

The frantic search for an idiom capable of coping with the post-war mood, gives way in this group of paintings to a newfound confidence reminiscent of the ‘can culture’ adamantly pursued by Stella and his peers, which Batchelor had identified as a key marker of the 1960s. While Cho Yong-ik, was certainly less privy to this changing tide he was nonetheless actively seeking to transcend Informel by turning his attention to bold forms and bright colours. The shadow of Kelly and Stella’s work is thus palpable in Cho Yong-ik’s stark juxtaposition of primary and secondary colours. However the bright reds, warm yellows and deep blues most interestingly reveal the artist’s tendency towards chromophilia rather than his direct affiliation with American colour field painting.

Cho Yong-ik’s penchant for chromophilia will persist throughout his three most well renowned bodies of work: the Jumhwa (dot painting), the wave paintings and the period of Mushim. Reverting to subdued hues and turning his attention to rhythmical patterning, the artist during this time will maintain a keen interest in colour which sets him apart from the more markedly chromophobic impulse of his Dansaekwha contemporaries. 76-816 (1976) and 77-625 (1977) are exemplary of how in the dot paintings the pace and the structure of the work revolves entirely around the small dot component repeated over and over again so as to fill the surface in its entirety. Despite the repetitive nature of the motif each dot is

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Left: 76-816, 1976 Acrylic on canvas, 129.5 × 96 cm Right: 77-625, 1977 Acrylic on canvas, 146 × 111 cm

singularly handcrafted, acting as an independent atom within the larger pictorial hemisphere. It is colour and more precisely the darker reverberations underscoring each unit, which lend the dots their independent standing. Unlike the abstract geometric works where bright colours dominated, here it plays a more subdued but nonetheless prominent role.

Despite labelling Cho Yong-ik a ‘colourfield oriented painter,’ the art critic Lee Yil went on to comment that the ‘repeatedly arranged brushstrokes that suggest a kind of sign, have greater significance than the fields of colour themselves.’7 I would contend exactly the opposite, it is in fact the sign, which is indebted to colour and not vice versa. This becomes even more apparent in the wave series where the density and intensity of the curling waves is entirely determined by colour. The ease with which the brushstroke peaks upwards and then dips downwards, as evinced by 80-772 (1980), is dependent on the delicate transition between colours. 80-202 (1980) displays a similar tendency but with an intensified rhythm determined by the varying sizes of the waves, which lend the work a tempestuous appearance.

Cho Yong-ik conceived of his wave paintings on a par with breathing. By accepting this interpretation it follows that colour not only endows rhythm but it also carries a metaphorical function. This is transferred onto the last fully-fledged body of work known as the period of Mushim (absentmindedness). Here the unfurling waves give way to a bamboo motif. Single strokes of varying dimensions conjure the 14

7. Lee Yil, ‘Linear Drawing and Coloured Plane,’ rpt. in Cho Yong-ik, p. 154

Left: 80-772, 1980 Acrylic on paper, 64 × 94 cm Right: 80-202, 1980 Acrylic on paper, 45.3 × 61.7 cm

presence of the evergreen plant, which in turn ushers in a sense of calm repose absent from earlier works. And from the heavy breathing of the tempestuous waves Cho Yong-ik settles on the steady breathing of these quasi-achromatic works.

In works like 93-9 (1993), colour appears to have been completely expunged in favour of a grey-toned palette, but as with all of Cho Yong-ik’s oeuvre the artist never relinquishes colour entirely. Even when the achromatic palette seizes control of the canvas, small details like the careful shading of each single stroke, reveal the artist’s penchant towards colour. In other words chromophobia never overcomes Cho Yong-ik’s penchant for chromophilia. Brushstrokes, bamboo sticks, dots and waves, exist as expressions of the artist’s diverging experiments with colour.

Ultimately the polar oppositions, which Cho Yong-ik saw in his work – light and dark, regular and irregular, smooth and hard edged – are contemporaneously fuelled and resolved by breathing colour into painting.

93-9, 1993 Acrylic on canvas, 112 × 145 cm

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1O QUESTIONS PROMPTED

BY CHO YONG-IK Matthew Israel

Art historian David Joselit has called artworks ‘exorbitant stockpiles’ of experience and information.1 Korean artist Cho Yong-Ik’s oeuvre is no different. Time spent looking at Cho’s work dramatically expands one’s understanding of it, as well as its origins and historical situation.

Yet at this point in time, for this observer (who is not an expert in Korean art), Cho’s work offers fewer conclusions than various questions that suggest new directions for further scholarly inquiry. Most of these questions – and I have ten of them – focus on how scholars might connect Korean art history – and particularly Tansaekhwa – with other narratives, alongside the just-as-important need to define and individuate Tansaekhwa as well as understand it as nonderivative or non-tangential.2 1. What are the bounds of Tansaekhwa?

The act of researching the ‘constellation’ of artists associated with Tansaekhwa characteristically brings up questions of how this larger category relates to the work and artists grouped within it.3 In particular, Cho’s use of color and gesture makes one question how the term ‘monochrome’ – so often understood as interchangeable with Tansaekhwa – relates to his work and to Tansaekhwa in general. In fact, many have written about the need to move away from ‘monochrome’ as the primary meaning of Tansaekhwa and consider Tansaekhwa artists more in terms of process and method.

For example, curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath recently explained in Frieze last year – as part of a conversation about Tansaekhwa – that it’s clear that many of the artists associated with the term were engaged more with ‘the process of a physical action that occupied a period of time and took place in a set space; one that centred on repetition, rhythm and an uncompromising acknowledgment of the materiality and act of painting.’4 In this way, in Bardaouil and Fellrath’s words, abstraction is seen as ‘a consequence of the artists’ approach to painting and not a primary formalistic concern or end. Painting to these artists is an act of physical movement and interaction with the canvas and materials rather than a gradual process towards the abstract representation of physical things.’5 2. Could Cho’s work and the work of others in his generation encourage art criticism to explore the connection between spirituality and art further?

Cho’s process has been called meditative, and he has been compared to a monk; and more broadly, Tansaekhwa has been seen as ‘devoted to the process

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1. See, for example, Jennifer Roberts, ‘The Power of Patience: Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention,’ Harvard Magazine, November – December 2013.

2. See, for example, Yoon Jin Sup, Joan Kee Sam Bardaouil, and Till Fellrath, ‘Skin & Surface,’ Frieze, February 2015.

3. My use of the term ‘constellation’ comes from Joan Kee, Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 1 4. See Yoon Jin Sup, Joan Kee Sam Bardaouil, and Till Fellrath, ‘Skin & Surface.’.

5. Ibid.

of repetition and specificity of material based on meditative nature’ as well as a reconnection with the practices of Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.6 One wonders what more could be said about spirituality regarding Cho’s work and Tansaekhwa, and how such a project might encourage re-examinations of the role of spirituality and religion in modern and contemporary art. It’s well known that the early 20th century contained many examples of artists seeking to engage the religious and spiritual in their work, such as Piet Mondrian or Wassily Kandinsky, but in the postwar period, art criticism has shied away from the subject, arguably due to the decline in religious practices globally. Yet it stands to reason that something significant is being missed. Maybe Tansaekhwa could be an unexpected departure point?

3. How do Cho’s processes and those of other artists associated with Tansaekhwa compare to Western artists of a similar moment?

Have we reached a point that conversations about Tansaekhwa have moved past defending it against accusations of being derivative or even establishing it the ‘opposite’ of minimalism, so that we can explore other parallels between Tansaekhwa and Western art? 7 For one, could we speak about how Tansaekhwa artists might have affinities less with artists who have been previously compared to them because of their looks (Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman) and more with artists engaged with process – possibly those outside of the United States and Europe? In this way, how innovative or part of a global phenomenon were the methods of Cho, who characteristically did not stop his method until he was finished or conceived of his process like that of breathing, and the picture as having a pulse?

6. See Yeong-bang Im, ‘The rhythm of vivid symbolic forms – the world of Cho, Yong-ik’s works,’ accessed at www. choyongik.com/archive 7. For explanation of how Tansaekhwa was theorized as the opposite of minimalism, see Kwon Mee-yoo, ‘Dansaekhwa on the rise,’ The Korea Times, August 8, 2009.

4. Are there parallels between Cho’s later works and eccentric abstraction?

The term ‘eccentric abstraction’ refers to the title of an exhibition curated by Lucy Lippard in 1966, which gave rise to a number of ideas and concepts eventually characterized as post-minimal: the emphasis on the process/ conception of work over the finished object; the use of chance methods to demystify the working methods of the artist; and the use of ‘poor’ materials not traditionally associated with art. In thinking about the show, Lippard explained that the idea of eccentric abstraction referred to what minimalism had left out.

This was ‘any aberrations toward the exotic’ as well as efforts to ‘dematerialize’ the art object.

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Cho’s works’ so-called ‘vivacious’ diverging from characteristic Tansaekhwa practices through color – especially his use of reds, oranges and sometimes blues – could point to a kind of eccentric abstraction within or outside of Tansaekhwa, which might lead us to explore how other artists could represent this as well.

5. What could we learn comparing the historical reception and rejection of Tansaekhwa with other historical movements?

Tansaekhwa works were initially seen as incomplete, seemingly authorless and style-less. What might we learn by comparing this reception to similarly received Western movements, such as Cubism or non-objective abstraction or minimalism? 8 Also, how did the 1980s backlash against Tansaekhwa – which focused on artists’ neglect of contemporary political or social realities – compare to that leveled against other non-objective moments at other historical moments?

One example would be the backlash against Minimalism in the United States in the 1960s during the Vietnam War, when artists such as Dan Flavin or Donald Judd were criticized for, in the words of artist Leon Golub, maintaining ‘the dream of the perfectibility of art’ while supporting the technological masters of American empire that ‘export destruction [and] . . . burn and drive peasants from their homes.’9 Or how might the backlash against Tansaekhwa artists be compared with the decline in the esteem for Greenbergian formalism in the 1980s?

6. How does Tansaekhwa compare with other art made post-turmoil?

Cho’s work and that of others associated with Tansaekhwa reflected the aftermath of the turmoil of the Korean War and a drastic departure from the previous era.10 Because of the war, as Joan Kee explains, ‘Their understanding of concepts such as permanence, durability and time [was] strikingly different from that of the next generation...their mark-making verges on a form of self-commemoration, almost as if they fear they may not live to see their works completed.’11 Due to the war, their work has also been seen as indicative of an introspective healing process, a turning back on the world.12 To better appreciate what made this work unique, how might it compare with other art made in postwar periods – such as in Europe in the 1920s? The so-called ‘return to order,’ the rise of non-objective movements such as Purism, as well as Dada and the rise of Surrealism, were all reactions to the trauma of the first world war. And then there is the art of Europe post-WWII, among many possible other comparisons – given that trauma is an all-too-common subject of the 20th century as well as our contemporary world.

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8. See Kee, 3 9. See my book, Kill for Peace: American Artists Against the Vietnam War (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 45.

10. Importantly, this wasn’t the only significant turmoil these artists underwent. In 1972, they underwent the adoption of what was considered a dictatorship when South Korean President Park Chung Hee declared martial law and instituted a new constitution that greatly expanded executive power.

11. See ‘Skin & Surface.’

12. See Rob Sharp, ‘A Surging Auction Market Points to Korean Minimalism as the Next Gutai,’ Artsy, 16 January, 2016.

7. How did the postwar information stream in Korea compare with other similar historical situations?

After the Korean War, in the process of reconstruction, artists were said to have received information – from multiple sources and in multiple fashions – about the past and present state of art in often-chaotic ways. In many respects, their education about art consisted of low-resolution black and white images and maybe some good-quality reproductions; limited written and oral accounts from artists able to travel abroad; and translations of significant texts that were often double-translated and thus could lose important meaning in the process.13 For one, one wonders what more might be understood about this era through comparison to how Chinese artists received Western art history in the 1980s, when, in the words of art historian Wu Hung, ‘it was as if a centurylong development of modern Western art was simultaneously restaged in China.’14 Potentially there are broader takeaways or trends in understanding cross-culturally what was received at these moments and – more importantly – what was not.

8. How does Tansaekhwa relate to recent American and European abstract painting?

Recent writing has attributed the contemporary rise of Tansaekhwa to a search for contemporary abstract painting with more art-historical significance than that made by current U.S. and European artists – who in recent years have been embraced dramatically by the art market. (This has also been seen as a reason for the rise in interest in Gutai.15) But are there deeper conclusions to be made about Tansaekhwa’s popularity at the current moment? Is its return to critical and market attention just a factor of being in the right place at the right time or something else?

13. For more on this, see Kee, 8; 12 and 24.

14. See Peggy Wang, ed.

Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (MoMA Primary Documents) (New York: Duke University Press, 2010), 35.

15. See Natasha Degen and Kibum Kim, ‘The Koreans at the Top of the Art World,’ The New Yorker, September 30, 2015.

9. What about the discussion of rhythm and music in the work of Cho and his contemporaries?

For one, in what way does this work relate to art’s dialogue with music in Western art history? Maybe there is something to be learned through comparison to how Cubism, Kandinsky, Abstract Expressionism, or East Village art of the 1980s engaged with music, whether classical, jazz, rock or hip hop? And thinking more broadly about the idea of rhythm, the word suggests some consideration of how performance art in the 1970s might resonate with Tansaekhwa: think of the work of Bruce Nauman or Marina Abramovic’s series of rhythm-titled works.

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10. What other histories lay behind Cho and Tansaekhwa?

Cho explains, for example, that his pen drawings on paper were inspired by research of Silla pottery and Joseon white porcelain.16 The aesthetics of Joseon pottery, for one, was minimalist and purist and reflected the Neo-Confucianist ruling ideology of the time. It seems like there could be more inquiry into the effect of Neo-Confucianist ideas on Cho and Tansaekhwa.

The Zen concept of mushin has also been related to Cho’s more recent works, particularly his wave paintings. Mushin, meaning ‘no mind,’ is one of the highest ideals within Zen, and refers to a mind that is fully aware to the present and not thinking or acting towards anything else. In terms of Cho, it is used to reflect on how his wave paintings feel past the idea of process or method and seem to be masterly, pure flows of intuitive action, directly from the body, employing a nonconscious mind. Cho’s work, in this way, seems to echo the words of Lao-Tzu, who said, ‘The stillness within stillness is not the true stillness (as in meditation), the true stillness is within motion.’ How could mushin relate to other artists within and outside of Tansaekhwa?

Endnote The hope is that by raising these ten questions, more inquiry into the work of Cho and Tansaekhwa will take place, particularly in connecting art histories outside of Korea – and not just the histories of the United States and Europe. By no means are these ten questions the only ones to pursue. A scholar with a different background and foci might find a host of other subjects to address, given the same topic. One wonders where such questions might lead and where study of Tansaekhwa will be in a decade. Will it engage a much wider group? Hopefully yes, but this goal needs to be cultivated through consistent attention by those engaged and passionate about the work so that exhibitions and projects can move beyond more superficial definitions and into progressively deeper inquiry.

Thank you to Joan Kee for her guidance in preparing this essay.

16. See Cho Yong-ik: Revealing the Void, catalogue for exhibition at the Sungkok Art Museum, 24 February – 24 April, 2016.

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JUMHWA

Opposite: 76-816, 1976, Acrylic on canvas, 129.5 × 96 cm Previous page: 78-919, 1978 Acrylic on canvas, 99 × 79.5 cm

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77-625, 1977 Acrylic on canvas, 146 × 111 cm

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77-1206, 1977, Acrylic on canvas, 130 × 96 cm

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78-21, 1978 Acrylic on canvas, 163 × 130 cm

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78-919, 1978 Acrylic on canvas, 99 × 79.5 cm

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78-1108, 1978 Acrylic on canvas, 155.7 × 125.4 cm

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80-1101, 1980 Acrylic on canvas, 145.5 × 111 cm

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WAVE

Opposite: 80-772, 1980 Acrylic on paper, 64 × 94 cm Previous page: 1984 (detail), 1984 Acrylic on canvas, 160 × 209.2 cm

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80-202, 1980 Acrylic on paper, 45.3 × 61.7 cm

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81-111, 1981 Acrylic on paper, 47 × 62.7 cm

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1984, 1984 Acrylic on canvas, 160 × 209.2 cm

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84-600, 1984 Acrylic on canvas, 130 × 161 cm

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1984-72, 1984 Acrylic on canvas, 130.2 × 161.2 cm

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MUSHIM

Opposite: 90, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 129.5 × 161.5 cm Previous page: 90-1110 (detail), 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 129.5 × 161.5 cm

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90-1110, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 129.5 × 161.5 cm

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90-1117, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 130 × 193.7 cm

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93-9, 1993 Acrylic on canvas, 112 × 145 cm

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97-401, 1997 Acrylic on paper laid on canvas, 78 × 98 cm

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LIST OF WORKS

60, 1960 Oil on canvas, 93 × 75 cm Page 9 61-901, 1961 Oil on canvas, 100 × 81 cm Page 9 64-10, 1964 Oil on canvas, 35 × 55 cm Page 10 68-77, 1968 Oil on canvas, 65 × 54 cm Page 11 68-113, 1968 Oil on canvas, 146 × 112 cm Page 11 76-816, 1976 Acrylic on canvas, 129.5 × 96 cm New York, Waterfall Mansion, ‘Re: Contemporary – Fermented Souls’, 2015.

Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n 70-24, reproduced in colour p.194 Pages 12, 27 77-625, 1977 Acrylic on canvas, 146 × 111 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 70-30, reproduced in colour p. 201 Pages 12, 29 77-1206, 1977, Acrylic on canvas, 130 × 96 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 70-37, reproduced in colour p. 208 Page 31

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78-21, 1978 Acrylic on canvas, 163 × 130 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 70-40, reproduced in colour p. 211 Page 33

81-111, 1981 Acrylic on paper, 47 × 62.7 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 80-39, reproduced in colour p. 285 Pages 46–47

78-919, 1978, Acrylic on canvas, 99 × 79.5 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 70-45, reproduced in colour p. 216 Pages 24, 35

80-1101, 1980 Acrylic on canvas, 145.5 × 111 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 80-02, reproduced in colour p. 232 Page 39

78-1108, 1978 Acrylic on canvas, 155.7 × 125.4 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 70-46, reproduced in colour p. 217 Page 37

1984, 1984 Acrylic on canvas, 160 × 209.2 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 80-12, reproduced in colours p. 260 Pages 40, 48-49

80-202, 1980 Acrylic on paper, 45.3 × 61.7 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 80-34, reproduced in colour p. 281 Pages 13, 44–45 80-772, 1980 Acrylic on paper, 64 × 94 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 80-08, reproduced in colour p. 256 (titled 80-72) Pages 13, 42–43

1984-72, 1984 Acrylic on canvas, 130.2 × 161.2 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 80-15, reproduced in colour p. 263 Pages 52-53 84-600, 1984 Acrylic on canvas, 130 × 161 cm Pages 50-51 90, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 129.5 × 161.5 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 90-08, reproduced in colour p. 314 Pages 56–57

90-1110, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 129.5 × 161.5 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 90-52, reproduced in colour p. 348–349 Pages 54, 58–59 90-1117, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 130 × 193.7 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 90-03, reproduced in colour p. 310 Pages 60–61 93-9, 1993 Acrylic on canvas, 112 × 145 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 90-51, reproduced in colour p. 346-347 Pages 13, 62-63 97-401, 1997 Acrylic on paper laid on canvas, 78 × 98 cm Seoul, Sungkok Art Museum, ‘Revealing the Void’, 26 February – 24 April 2016, n. 90-27, reproduced in colour p. 330 Pages 64–65

WRITERS

Flavia Frigeri is an Art Historian and Curator, currently Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate in the History of Art department at University College London.

Previously she served as a Curator, International Art (2014-16) and Assistant Curator (2011-14) at Tate Modern, where she worked on exhibitions, acquisitions and permanent collection displays. Most recently, she co-curated (with Jessica Morgan) The World Goes Pop. Previous projects include Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, Paul Klee: Making Visible and Ruins in Reverse. From 2010 to 2011 she was the recipient of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s Hilla Rebay International Fellowship, which involved responsibilities at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.

Art historian, writer, and educator, Matthew Israel is Curator at Large at Artsy, where he was the founding director of The Art Genome Project and currently directs Artsy OnSite, Artsy’s global series of artist talks and conversations.

He is the author of Kill for Peace: American Artists Against the Vietnam War (University of Texas Press, 2013) and The Big Picture: Contemporary Art in 10 Artworks (Prestel, forthcoming Spring 2017), and he is currently at work on a book about the lives of artists in the 21st century. Israel has also written for various international art magazines, worked for prominent New York City galleries, managed major artist estates and foundations, and taught at New York University, where he received a PhD in Art History and Archaeology in 2011.

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Olivier and Priscilla Malingue would like to thank all of the people who have contributed to the production of this exhibition and catalogue.

Inparticular, we would like to thank Edouard and Lorraine Malingue, Jennifer Caroline Ellis, Rhody Chan, Joanne Lim, Steven Choi, Flavia Frigeri, Matthew Israel, Lewis Ronald, Anne Odling-Smee and Cassandra Brayham.

Catalogue design: O-SB Images: Plastiques Photography First edition, printed, October 2016 Second edition, digital, December 2016

Olivier Malingue Gallery 143 New Bond Street London, W1S 2TP www.oliviermalingue.com

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