Park Seo-Bo
South Korean
Park Seo-Bo is a pioneering figure in Korean contemporary art and a key founder of the Dansaekhwa movement, a distinctive form of Korean monochrome painting that emerged in the early 1970s. Dansaekhwa represents a fusion of Western abstraction and traditional Korean aesthetics, grounded in meditative repetition and material sensitivity. Though it was never formalized through a manifesto, artists associated with the movement—such as Chung Chang-Sup and Lee Ufan—are united by a restrained color palette (typically white, beige, and black), a tactile engagement with materials like hanji paper and canvas, and a labor-intensive, process-driven methodology that often borders on ritual.In Park Seo-Bo’s oeuvre, discipline and repetition are paramount, reflecting a deep philosophical shift from his earlier involvement with art informel. This European movement, akin to American Abstract Expressionism, gained traction in Korea during the 1950s as artists sought new means of expression in the aftermath of the Korean War. In 1957, Park co-founded the Hyun-Dae Artists Association, promoting the gestural intensity of art informel as a cathartic response to national trauma. A UNESCO scholarship took him to Paris in 1961, where he immersed himself further in this idiom. His early Primordialis series—marked by violent brushwork, somber tones, and amorphous shapes—reflects the raw emotionality of that period.However, by the mid-1960s, Park turned away from Western paradigms and began embracing East Asian philosophies, particularly Taoism and Zen Buddhism. This shift catalyzed the development of his signature Écriture series, where rhythmic pencil lines or gestures are repetitively incised into still-wet paint, evoking meditative discipline and spiritual introspection.Park Seo-Bo has exhibited extensively at major institutions including Château La Coste in France; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and the Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Langen Foundation in Germany; Tate Liverpool; the Brooklyn Museum in New York; and the Venice Biennale. His works are housed in prominent collections such as the DIA Art Foundation; the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Abu Dhabi; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; M+ in Hong Kong; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.