Ryu Kyung Chai, Ryu Hoon

Installation View (1)

Hakgojae Gallery presents the two-person exhibition, Void and Existence from Wednesday, July 9 to Saturday, August 9, featuring works by RYU Kyung Chai (1920–1995, Haeju, Hwanghae Province) and RYU Hoon (1954–2014, Seoul). The exhibition features 15 abstract paintings by RYU Kyung Chai and 24 sculptural works by RYU Hoon. Although the two artists are father and son, their practices transcend lineage. Shaped by different eras, each forged a distinct formal language that mirrors sensation and reality in its own way. This exhibition illuminates how subtle differences give rise to resonance and intersections.

RYU Kyung Chai, The Day ’82-5, 1982, Oil on canvas, 162x130cm

Art bears the traces of its time, and the artist, as one who traverses that era, raises questions from within it. This exhibition delves into the universal yet profound theme of existence through the sculptural languages of two artists, RYU Kyung Chai and RYU Hoon, each shaped by different eras and environments. Through aesthetic response and sculptural evolution, the exhibition probes the fundamental continuity between art and its time.

Installation View (2)

RYU Kyung Chai emerged during the formative years of Korean modern art in the post-liberation era. Rooted in an Eastern worldview, his paintings move beyond simple landscape depiction to contemplate the cyclical order of birth, extinction, and renewal, all while seeking harmony between nature, humanity, and life itself. RYU Kyung Chai first came to prominence with Neighborhood of a Bare Mountain, which was awarded the President’s Prize at the inaugural Grand Art Exhibition of Korea in 1949. Now in the collection of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the painting epitomizes RYU’s vision. From the 1960s onward, his practice moved into non-representational painting, shifting its focus from visible nature to the inner realm in which nature is perceived. By the 1970s, he had established a structural rigor through monochromatic color-field compositions, securing his place as an artist who reinterpreted Korean naturalism in a contemporary idiom. RYU continually probed nature’s essence, expanding it into artistic practice; his work serves as a subtle passage through which being itself can be felt, embracing cycles of creation and renewal within a restrained order.

RYU Kyung Chai, The Day ’85-6, 1985, Oil on canvas, 130x162cm

RYU Hoon, by contrast, probes the depths of existence through an experimental, deconstructive vocabulary. Dismantling the classical human figure, he reassembles it into geometric configurations, thereby redefining notions of space, body, and form. RYU Hoon transformed the elements of “structure” and “composition”—key components in his father’s work, with which he was intimately familiar—into three-dimensional variations. He continued to dismantle familiar orders and formalities, overturning them with a sense of estrangement. This process compels the viewer to confront the instability, contradictions, and inherent imperfections of existence.

Installation View (3)

In his work, material goes beyond its physical properties to symbolize the human interior. Incompletely formed structures evoke a palpable tension, while fragmented shapes reveal the fissures and collisions within being itself. This stands in stark contrast to the harmonious natural order his father pursued. RYU Hoon’s work rejects calm balance and instead explores tension and deliberate fragmentation. His sculptures map the modern self—split and unresolved. Since the late 1980s, he developed an independent sculptural language that redefines form and space.

RYU Kyung Chai, heart’s desire ’92-6, 1992, Oil on canvas, 135x135cm

This exhibition sets their opposing ideas and visual vocabularies side by side, reconstructing layered ties between era and generation, form and philosophy, order and rupture. In the title, “Void” signifies the point from which all creation can emerge, while “Presence” marks the living trace and weight of presence within that void. RYU Kyung Chai’s paintings and sculptures and RYU Hoon’s spatial structures reflect and embrace one another in this void, sustaining a dialogue across time, memory, body, and spirit. The exhibition’s most compelling point is that both artists pose the same question—“What is existence?”—through different senses and languages.

RYU Hoon, Coexistence, 1999, Bronze, 60x6x60cm

While RYU Kyung Chai pursued the possibility of being through a harmony between the world and the human spirit—constructing order through form—RYU Hoon lays bare the uncertainty of existence in a reality where such harmony has collapsed. By dismantling structure, he confronts the depths of the self. Their trajectories diverge, yet both gaze into the void beyond form, where the essential question of what it means to be alive remains.

RYU Hoon, Form, 1993, Bronze, 52x16x52cm

Void and Presence is not a rupture but an altered inheritance that condenses the density of time and the traces of life. It is not merely the act of shaping form, but an artistic practice that reawakens the fundamental question of the relationship between the world and the human, between nature and existence. It is a dialogue in silence, a fullness within emptiness, inviting viewers to trace how art is passed down and transformed across time and generations.

RYU Hoon, Coexistence, 2011, Terracotta, 44x11x44cm

Hakgojae Gallery
50, Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul
+82-2-720-1524

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