Kim Chong Hak, Painter of Seoraksan

From the venue:

Having first worked as an abstract painter in the 1960s, Kim ultimately rejected the adoption of Western-style abstraction, which he viewed as a response to national melancholy brought on by previous decades of hardship and deprivation. In the late 1970s, he settled in Gangwon Province, eastern South Korea, home of Mount Seorak. There he sought out an alternative artistic discourse, moving away from the monochromatic painting popular in Korea at that time toward his unabashedly expressive style. He has since dedicated his life and work to interpreting the environs of Mount Seorak, developing an artistic and emotional attunement to the natural world during decades of self-imposed isolation in the mountains.

His work reasserts the expressive potency of mountain imagery in traditional East Asian art while also demonstrating the influence of international movements of the 1970s and 1980s such as neo-expressionism and other strains of figurative painting.

This exhibition will travel nationally after it debuts at the High.