Korean artist Yoo Seung Ho is known for his calligraphic landscape artworks which evoke classical East Asian shanshui landscape painting traditions. In his works, what appear to be brushstrokes are actually tiny dots or words written in hangul, the Korean alphabet.
Read MoreYoo Seung Ho was born in Seochun, Korea in 1974 and graduated with a BFA from Seoul's Hansung University in 1999. It was during his studies that he began to develop his idiosyncratic style which—based on the Korean word for landscape paintings, sansu—came to be known as munjasansu. Yoo received critical acclaim early on, exhibiting in the 2002 Gwangju Biennale and receiving the Seoknam Art Prize in 2003.
The words that make up Yoo Seung Ho's works are often simple and onomatopoeic. Humour and absurdity are intentional on Yoo's part; in the 2002 drawing 앵— echowords, a Korean onomatopoeic word used to describe the buzzing sounds of flies or mosquitoes is repeated in the shape of a swarm-like contrail. In yodeleheeyoo (2006), a common expression Koreans shout at mountaintops (야호) is repeatedly rendered in a minute scale to replicate the effect of a classical landscape painting.
Yoo Seung Ho engages with different calligraphic traditions to explore the relationship between images and writing systems. In From Head to Toe, for example, his solo exhibition at Seoul's Park Ryu Sook Gallery and P21 in 2017, the artist displayed works experimenting with the Chinese character '草', a word for grass whose form also derives from the appearance of plant life.
Elsewhere in the show, Yoo introduced fluorescent colours in several works, such as the bright orange painting 초fool (2017); and moon (2017), in which he used the English word 'moon' to compose mountains and what appears to be a small village against a neon yellow background.
Select solo exhibitions of Yoo Seung Ho's work include From Head to Toe, Park Ryu Sook Gallery and P21, Seoul (2017); Shaking Your Hair Loose, Perigee Gallery, Seoul (2015); echowords, DOOSAN Gallery, New York (2013); YOOCHIHAN, Gallery PLANT, Seoul (2010); echowords, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo (2007); and echowords, ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul (2005).
Select group exhibitions include Gallery Highlight, P21, Seoul (2018); PRESENT FROM THE PAST, Korean Cultural Centre UK, London (2010); Collection Highlights, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon (2010); Another Landscape, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2008) and The 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2006).
Yoo Seung Ho's website can be found here.
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2021
