RHEE SANG-WOOC

RHEE Sang-Wooc (1923–1988) was an artist who established his own unique world of abstraction through his free alternation between calligraphic abstraction and lyrical geometric abstraction. The spontaneity of his single-brushstroke calligraphy does not compulsively clutter the canvas. The performative process of emptying and filling, together with the traces of nonaction, leads us to reexamine Rhee’s sui generis abstraction, where the characteristic materiality of oil paint intersects with the distinctive transparency of Hangukhwa (Korean paintings using traditional materials and styles) painting. The lines and colours, the materiality and transparency, the rhythm of tension and release, the layered textures, and the brushstrokes that dart across them—all these things transport his paintings into a new realm of abstraction. By choosing a painting methodology of taking advantage of ambivalent properties without relying fully on either aspect, he realised anew historical achievement and blazed a new trail in Korean abstraction.