 
Park Saeng Kwang /Lee Wha Ja and the Spirit
of Tradition
September 6 - October 5, 2001
Gallery Korea is pleased to announce the opening
of the exhibition Park Saeng Kwang / Lee Wha Ja
and the Spirit of Tradition. With an exuberant late
style, Park Saeng Kwang established an innovative
re-examination of traditional Korean painting that
transcended the turmoil in 20th century Korean culture
following first, the Japanese occupation and later,
the division of the nation. Park began exploring
traditional Korean folk religion, which blends Shamanism
with Buddhism. The Shamans in Korea are usually
female, and their brightly colored robes, as well
as the distinctive color patterns that decorate
Korean temples, gave Park the formal means to articulate
an aesthetic vision celebrating his roots and identity.
As critic, Choi Yeol outlines in the catalogue accompanying
the exhibition, Park’s paintings and those
of his disciple, Lee Wha Ja reconcile Eastern and
Western styles, and in doing so rejuvenate both
modern art and traditional Korean painting.
There is a significant parallel between notions
of history, memory and identity that inform much
contemporary art and the specifically Korean sensibility
that Park Saeng Kwang, who was trained and had
worked in Japan, struggled to recover in his painting.
It is the vitality of folk customs that Lee Wha
Ja celebrates as resistant to the rationalism
of modernity and yet it is the freedom of modern
experimentation that engenders the dynamic compositions
of her painting. The mineral colors are applied
with fish or animal bone glue and create a rich
surface plane from which the image appears to
expand towards the viewer.
In 1985 Park Saeng Kwang was given a one-person
exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. This
international recognition came only in the last
year of his life, but it encouraged a greater
respect for his achievements in his native Korea.
This will be one of the most important exhibitions
of the year for Gallery Korea as it marks the
first time that Park’s revolutionary paintings
will be exhibited in the United States.
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