2022. 9. 2 – 9. 6
Kim Jin-Kyu, Park Rae-Heon, Park Sung-wook, Lee Kang-Hyo, Ree Soo-Jong, Choi Sung-Jae, Huh Sang-wook

Unlike celadon or white porcelain, Buncheong Ware was mainly produced at private kilns, and was imbued with a sense of freedom, creative aesthetics, and diversity evidenced by a lack of interference and the formality of official royal kilns. In the Yeongnam region, Buncheong based on the inlay (inhwa) and stamping (sanggam) techniques developed. In the Honam region brushed slip (gwiyal) and dipping (deombeong) Buncheong, decorated with brushstrokes or soaked in a solution of white clay, were popular. Underglaze iron-brown painting (cheolhwa buncheong) was produced in the Chungcheong region, in the area around Gyeryongsan Mountain. Buncheong’s unique sense of form dependent on the region and method in which it was made is indicative of a modern sensibility and formative beauty.

The < Buncheong > Exhibition, organized by the Korea Craft & Design Foundation, will exhibit Buncheong creations by seven artists who make use of tradition as a basis for their work but seek to establish a creative world with new materials and initiatives. Park Rae-heon and Kim Jin-kyu developed stamped prints and inlays into paintings by embedding distinct patterns, shapes, textures, and gradation effects into their creations. Lee Soo-jong, Choi Sung-jae, and Lee Kang-hyo attempted to render the formativeness and material properties inherent in modern art by employing the human body and the paintbrush as tools on a gray background. Huh Sang-wook drew images of the artist’s day-to-day existence and traditional designs as if sketching and subsequently provided a refreshing sense of contrast and wit by integrating the bakji (reversed inlay) technique into the background. Park Sung-wook created a transformed shape by mixing various soils and pigments,
before coating the surface with white slip and firing it in the kiln to help create a world with a unique depth of physical texture and abstraction.

Rather than reproducing or imitating the actual world, these artists expressed the naturalness and sense of freedom concealed within using nature and materials. The new Buncheong, the art zeitgeist of our time, is made possible only by looking at the context and meaning of the era in which Buncheong was originally created and the universality and aesthetic qualities of Koreans, rather than by simply adapting the physical form and techniques of old traditions.
This is the very spirit of the wisdom implied in the idioms “review the old to learn the new” (溫故知新) and “create the new based on the essence of the old” (法古創新), both themes that Korean contemporary artists have pursued in earnest.

jisu Hong Art Critic

Korea Craft & Design Foundation
Haeyoung Bldg., 53, Yulgok-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea
+82 2 398 7900

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