YUN HYONG-KEUN, DONALD JUDD

PKM Gallery presents EMBRACING: Yun Hyong-keun with Chusa and Donald Judd from March 29th to April 18th, 2016. In this exhibition, paintings by Yun Hyong-keun, master of the Dansaekhwa, Korean monochrome painting, will be shown alongside the works of Kim Jeong-hui, also known by the pseudonym Chusa and considered Korea’s greatest painter and calligrapher, and minimalist maestro Donald Judd.

Yun Hyong-keun is a leading figure of the globally acclaimed Korean monochrome Dansaekhwa movement, pursuing a uniquely refined aesthetic with profound canvas work redolent of India ink. Yun was greatly inspired by Chusa; as he himself is known to have declared, “My paintings have their roots in Chusa Kim Jeong-hui’s calligraphy.” The elegance flowing through the subtle ink-strokes and the exceptional beauty of the structural balance struck between blank space and color reveal the timeless finesse of the literary artist as he unifies script with art.

Donald Judd, a key personage of minimalism, came into contact with Yun’s work during a visit to Seoul for Judd’s personal exhibition in the early 1990s, and was at once captivated with Yun’s meditative and structural paintings. In 1994, he hosted a solo exhibition for Yun at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, founded by Judd himself. Judd, with his keen eye for Asian architecture and culture, discovered a deep kinship with Yun’s work: the two artists’ constructivist approaches toward the philosophical notions of man-nature and time-space shared wide intellectual commonality.

This exhibition seeks to transcend time and showcases the works of Yun’s greatest inspiration, Chusa Kim Jeong-hui, alongside Yun’s own paintings within a single space; it is also highly significant in that it is the first such exhibition to highlight the aesthetic and logical semblances between Yun, who bridges the aesthetics of East and West, and his contemporary Donald Judd, an artistic virtuoso of another culture.