Soh(素)_empty morph

 

Through Soh(素) empty morph, a group exhibition featuring three artists, Tschoonsu Kim, Soohyeok Shin, and Kwangyup Cheon, The Page Gallery intends to reveal the unique factors and attitudes of Korean art within the larger frame of Minimalism. The work of these three artists pursues a common process of returning to one fundamental so (素) through non-purposefulness and offering of the body. Yongdae Kim, former director of the Daegu Art Museum, who curated this exhibition, says, “In terms of attention to repetitiveness and process, and in terms of offering the body to record life, their work is intimate with Post-Minimalism.” Therefore, this exhibition takes a closer look at the work of those who have been classified as the same generation within the large frame of Dansaekhwa (the Korean Monochrome movement) and captures the tension that it emits.

 

"Empty morph" is an empty form, and refers to "a form that has no meaning in itself, but whose appearance can be predicted in the surrounding environment, and as such, is a form that does not belong to any morpheme." The canvases of Tschoonsu Kim, Soohyeok Shin, and Kwangyup Cheon are the result of the accumulation of specific time and space and each artist's contemplation. However, the viewer cannot predict their complete process at all, and has no choice but to make a certain association and only have a visual experience of ‘seeing.’ The place where the abstractness meets is the very core of their work and the base of the strata. The original so (素), where everything is removed until there is nothing left in the end: their repeated work process is a methodology of muwi (wu wei, inaction, 無爲) and contemplation to return to this place.