TEFAF NEW YORK 2025

Our booth will highlight the three artists at the center of our gallery exhibition: Kim Tschang-Yeul, Park Seo-Bo, and Lee Ufan.

In the decades following the Korean War, Kim Tschang-Yeul (1929–2021), Park Seo-Bo (1931–2023), and Lee Ufan (b. 1936) each developed signature painterly languages that they would explore and cultivate throughout their careers. From the early 1970s onwards, Kim devoted his career to depicting luminous droplets of water in hyperrealistic detail. A major retrospective of Kim’s work is set to open at MMCA Korea this August. Park’s Ecriture series, which began with repeated pencil markings on wet paint, later transitioned into monochromatic, relief-like canvases created by carving lines into the pulp of hanji (traditional Korean paper). Works from both Kim’s waterdrop series and Park’s _Ecriture_series are also currently on view in our gallery exhibition in Chelsea. Our booth will also feature works by Lee Ufan**,** recognized for his vital role in both the Dansaekhwa and Mono-ha (“School of Things”) movements.

Kwon Young-Woo (1926–2013) originally trained as an ink painter and combined this gestural painting style with the tactile qualities of hanji. Kwon pushed beyond the two-dimensional surface, revealing the sculptural possibilities of paper by layering, cutting, scratching, and tearing his material. In 2024, his work was featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition Lineages: Korean Art at The Met.

Ha Chong-Hyun (b. 1935) is an equally significant figure in modern Korean art, renowned for his Conjunction series, which he first developed in the 1970s and continues to this day. Ha’s signature painting technique involves pushing oil paint from the verso side of his hemp cloth canvases, then manipulating the paint on the front to create richly textured compositions. The artist’s early career was recently the focus of a solo exhibition at Art Sonje in Seoul, and recent Conjunction works will be featured in a solo exhibition at Château La Coste in Provence, opening in June.

A contemporary of the Dansaekhwa generation, the Korean fiber artist Lee Shinja (b. 1930) is finally getting her due. Her breakthrough solo exhibition at MMCA Gwacheon in 2023 marked a turning point for the artist, bringing her once-overlooked practice to a wider audience and critical acclaim. Works from across her career range from experimental textile compositions using a variety of material and textures to semi-abstract tapestries evoking the mountainous landscape of Korea’s countryside.

This August, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive will open Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread, the first comprehensive survey of Lee’s work in North America.

Also on view are a curated selection of twentieth-century and contemporary highlights, including sculptures by Minoru Niizuma and Louise Bourgeois, small paintings by Pacita Abad, and ceramic works by Jane Yang D’Haene.