국립현대미술관

The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea (NMOCA) presents the exhibition Ha, Chong Hyun Retrospective in 15th June - 12th August. To help establish an authoritative history of contemporary art in Korea, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, has been organizing exhibitions to explore the original art worlds of pioneering senior artists and, for this year, hosts an exhibition to look back on the art and life of Ha Chong Hyun, one of Korea's representative abstract artists.

This retrospective covers all periods of Ha Chong Hyun's artistic career starting from his early years in the 1960's and his AG (Korean Avant-Garde Society) years in the 1970's, to his prime years characterized by the development and establishment of unique abstract painting series Conjunction and the recent Post-Conjunction years.

Ha Chong Hyun's Conjunction series, created by the coalescence of paint and hemp cloth, started in 1974 and continued through 2009 for over 35 years, becoming the most representative work of Ha Chong Hyun's art world. Conjunction cast aside the preconceived notion that painting should be done by applying paint on the surface of a picture and, by coming up with an original method of painting by pushing pigments from behind the picture, broke new ground in abstract painting. When the paint is pressed down from the backside of hemp cloth woven with thick threads, the paint comes out to the front of the cloth through its coarse weave. Critics would liken Ha's Conjunction to the earthen wall of a country house made with clay and rough straws or to the thickly condensed solution that drips through a hemp cloth when twisting the cloth to squeeze liquid out of boiled medicinal herbs. In Conjunction, Ha Chong Hyun's interest lies in the conversation with materials. In order to reveal the expressions the paint and the canvas make on their own, processes utilizing not only eyesight but tactile sense are also repeatedly carried out.

The Post-Conjunction series that began in 2010 demonstrates that Ha is an artist who, despite his nearly 80 years of age, is still going forward on his path of relentless experimentation and growth. Those works of Post-Conjunction being shown for the first time in this retrospective convey, in the words of the artist, the "joy of a fully loaded ship" with large, joyful pictures painted with primary colors.

Apart from being an artist, Ha Chong Hyun also played an important role in the field of art as an educator who served as a professor at the College of Fine Arts, Hongik University for more than 40 years and as an administrator who headed the Seoul Museum of Art in 2001-2006.

It is hoped that this retrospective, in which Ha Chong Hyun's representative works are displayed, will be an opportunity to shed new light on artist Ha Chong Hyun's art world that has been rigorously cultivated in Korea's contemporary art field over the past 50-odd years, and also to retrace the history of the half-century of abstract painting in Korea.

During the course of exhibition, "Ha, Chong Hyun and Three Talks" will be arranged to explore Ha, Chong Hyun's art world in diverse ways, including the lectures of critics in and outside of Korea, Ha's conversation with his artistic colleagues, and Ha's conversation with viewers.