Seoul opens the front doors of Korea's monochrome painters
Seoul now lets you walk through the homes of the painters behind Dansaekhwa, or monochrome painting.
Two house-museums opened this year and a third family home opened to the public for the first time, according to Artnet.
Dansaekhwa took shape in South Korea during the 1970s. Its pioneers include Lee Ufan, Yun Hyong-Keun, Kim Tschang-Yeul and Park Seo-Bo, painters known for slow, repeated gestures in a limited palette.
The Kim Tschang-Yeul Atelier opened in May in Pyeongchang-dong in northern Seoul. It occupies the artist's former home and studio, a house designed by Kyu Sung Woo and completed in 1988.
Kim, who died in 2021 at age 91, painted water drops on raw hemp and linen. After his death, his family donated the home to the local government, which brought in Platform Architecture to renovate it for visitors.
You enter through his front door. The rooms keep the feel of a working house, with space to look closely at how each drop sits on rough cloth.
The Park Seo-Bo Museum in the Yeonhui-dong area of Seoul opened in August. The five-storey building was designed by Choi Moon-gyu and stands next to the studio where Park lived and worked, according to Cool Hunting.
Park died in 2023 at age 91. Its first show pairs his work with that of Huong Dodinh, a Vietnamese artist based in Paris.
Yun Hyong-Keun's home and studio in Seoul has also opened to the public for the first time. Seoul's PKM Gallery planned to feature his work at Frieze Seoul, the city's international art fair, as reported by The New York Times.
Lee Ufan, 90, is the eldest of the group with the widest museum footprint. He has dedicated museums in Arles in France, on Naoshima Island in Japan, and in Busan in South Korea.
The openings arrived in a crowded fair week. Seoul's Kukje Gallery lined up works ranging from Dansaekhwa master Ha Chong-hyun to Haegue Yang, as reported by The Korea Herald. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in Seoul has previously presented a retrospective of Park Seo-Bo.
For visitors, this means less distance and more daily life. You see where light fell in the studio, where guests were received, and where a painting was left to dry.
