I.

Everyone died,

Lee Il died,

so did Han Changgi,

so did Joseph Love,

so did Donald Judd,

so did Hwang Hyun-wook.

I’m the only one left.

All of the friends I liked are dead.

(Yun Hyong-keun, 2004. 5. 8)

 

Yun Hyong-keun, a few years before his death, drew an obliquely pointed upright pillar in his small notebook, and wrote the words quoted above. Additional information about the people mentioned might be needed to make this short ‘memoir’ of the artist clearer.

 

Lee Yil (1932-1997) was a poet and an art critic who had dropped out of his studies at the Department of French Language and Literature at Seoul National University, and traveled to Paris in 1957 in order to major in art history at the Université Paris-Sorbonne. Lee Il was also a theorist who supported the artistic growth of postwar Korean artists during his professorship at Hongik University after his return to Korea in 1965. His concept of ‘Hwanwon’ (還元, Reduction), which means that constituent elements of art will eventually converge toward the most fundamental state and notion, set the theoretical framework of Korea’s Dansaekhwa movement. Lee was a close friend of Yun Hyong-keun’s, and they worked on multiple projects together in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1995, when Lee Il was appointed as the commissioner for the inaugural exhibition at the Korean Pavilion of the 46th Venice Biennale, he exhibited Yun’s paintings along with those of Kim In-Kyum, Jheon Soo-Cheon, and Kwak Hoon.

 

Han Changgi (1936-1997) in some respects was the person who most closely shared an ‘aesthetic attitude’ with Yun Hyong-keun, although he was not a figure in the art world. Han was the first and sole distributor of the Encyclopedia Britannica in Korea. From the money that he made through his business, Han endeavored to document and preserve Korea’s indigenous culture. He is particularly known as the publisher of the magazine The Deep Rooted Tree, which was coerced into closure by the interim government authority in 1980. Han Changgi had profound insight into the value of Korean folk art, which was the bridge that connected him with Yun.

 

Joseph P. Love (1929-1992) was an American-born, Tokyo-based art critic, who had discontinued studying theology, and gone on to earn a bachelor’s degree in art history from Columbia University in 1967. Afterwards, he taught at Sophia University in Tokyo, and introduced contemporary Japanese art abroad via American art journals. Love became interested in Korea through Lee Ufan, and during his visit to Seoul in 1974, he encountered Yun Hyong-keun’s paintings. Fascinated by what he saw, he became an ardent supporter of Yun’s works, and shortly thereafter, in 1976, arranged Yun’s first solo show at Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo where he wrote an impressive essay for the exhibition leaflet.

 

Hwang Hyun-wook (1948-2001), who was an artist before becoming a full-time gallerist, had an exceptionally close relationship with Yun Hyong-keun despite their 20-year age difference. Yun financially backed Hwang, who had dreamt of opening a gallery based on his broad knowledge of Western modernism despite lacking any startup capital. Yun contributed funds to the implementation of the project, enabling Hwang to open Inkong Gallery in Daehangno, Seoul in 1988. This gallery actively introduced eminent international artists to Korea when it abruptly opened its doors to foreign countries following the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Solo exhibitions of Donald Judd in 1991 and that of Richard Long in 1993 are two of the many exhibitions held there.

 

Donald Judd (1928-1994) is considered the representative of American Minimal Art. Although he never agreed with the term, ‘Minimalism,’ Judd stressed the physical and phenomenological experience of “specific objects,” consequently pursuing the ‘simple’ and ‘concise’ nature of form, proportion, color, and materiality. Judd visited Yun Hyong-keun’s Seoul studio in 1991 when he held his first exhibition in Korea at Inkong Gallery, and intuited at first sight that they could become friends. Judd later organized Yun’s American solo shows at Judd’s exhibition spaces in New York (1993) and Marfa in Texas (1994).

 

If Yun Hyong-keun’s ‘Gate of Heaven and Earth’ (天地門) series, which was produced for almost ten years from 1974, is an expression of the artist’s struggle to find salvation in himself, it would be his few “friends [he] liked” who supported Yun, hovering between the very narrow gates, to escape from the tunnel of solitude. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Yun deviated from his ‘gate’ compositions, and started to show subtle yet varied experimentation, and migration of interests in his works. In the mid-1980s, he revisited his ‘hanji’ work for a deeper investigation into the ‘interplay between the paper/canvas and paint.’ Yun developed his distinctive method in which the paint seeps into and runs down the surface. Thus, the resilience and tension between the surface and the turpentine-diluted paintsbecame the subject matters of his late oeuvre. He portrayed issues regarding ‘time’ in full measure through the rich use of umber and sometimes created entirely colored surfaces that remind of ‘earth’ (1988-1989). From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Yun constantly undertook experimental approaches, studying the interactions between the surface and the paints, as well as the dynamism among the painted columns.

 

These canvases were widely and steadily showcased in Japanese galleries at that time while new paintings were always first unveiled at Hwang Hyun-wook’s galleries - Soo Gallery and Inkong Gallery. In 1992, Yun Hyong-keun participated at Working with Nature, a group exhibition of contemporary Korean art held at the Tate Liverpool, and later had solo exhibitions in New York and Marfa, both hosted by Judd.

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II.

As mentioned previously, Donald Judd met Yun Hyong-keun for the first time in 1991 when Judd visited Seoul in connection with his solo exhibition at Inkong Gallery, (Judd had visited Korea in 1947 as a soldier and had mentioned that he decided to become an architect around that time. Upon his return to Korea after forty-four years, Judd left a bitter remark on the rapidly changing cityscape of Seoul. Donald Judd, Writings 1958-1993, Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Gallery, 2016, p.744) where Judd purchased three of Yun’s works on the spot, and invited Yun for solo exhibitions at the Judd Foundation in New York (1993), and at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa (1994). Yun, likewise, purchased one of Judd’s works from his Seoul exhibition and hung it on the wall of his living room.

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Both Yun Hyong-keun and Donald Judd have the attitudes of an innocent country-dweller, something which they thoughtfully aimed at throughout their lives. Both knew that such simple living has the ‘highest’ value. They have in common that they both strove to appreciate the principles of nature through observation, and knew how to pursue simple yet sublime states in their works through acquired wisdom and insight from the natural world.

 

It is interesting to note that the interaction between the two artists continued to cross-fertilize each other’s practice based on the points of mutual understanding. Donald Judd experimented on the unique materiality of hanji by producing prints with the paper he brought back from Korea in 1991. Hanji, a traditional paper made from the inner bark of the mulberry tree - a tree native to Asia - is a material that is highly praised for its outstanding ability in absorbing ink and paints, and for lasting more than five-hundred years. Judd observed the subtle changes in the surface texture and tone of hanji caused by imprinting a grid of fixed ratio and pattern, as well as colored woodcut blocks on the paper. (Judd’s series of woodcut prints from this period is on view at the Judd Foundation in New York. Prints: 1992, Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, New York, March 1-July 11, 2020)

 

On Yun Hyong-keun’s side, after his encounter with Donald Judd, he not only sought for a drastic shift towards ‘simplification’ in his works but also attained unwavering confidence in this pursuit. The variability of expression in his paintings from the mid-1980s gradually disappeared after the mid-1990s and thus the colors were reduced to pure black, and their forms became closer to absolute rectangles. Yun’s new approach to color and form showed his determined inclination to be faithful to the hidden ‘orders’ of scale and proportion. These elements are distinctive of Yun’s works produced during this period.

 

Yun Hyong-keun’s American solo exhibition, which had been planned before Judd’s death in February 1994, opened as scheduled in July at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. At the exhibition, Yun lined up canvases of the same size at regular intervals as if he were reaffirming that no more superfluities were necessary, recapitulating the utmost simplicity in his works. Although the black rectangles had become even simpler, the paintings projected a rich, eye-catching effect created when the outdoor light coming through the windows touched the surface of the canvases. Any object with the simplest possible form and the most uniform color that occupies a space speaks the existence of itself only through its ‘scale’ and ‘proportion.’ Repeatedly juxtaposing paintings of the same size, Yun shifted the focus of his works to redefining the relationship between each painting and between the paintings and the exhibition space itself.

 

In repetitively designed buildings, formerly a military barracks, Dan Flavin’s fluorescent tubes ‘exist’ in the space while emitting subtle variations in color shades, and Carl Andre’s artworks are unmindfully placed on the floor. At one section of the building with its repeating structures, Yun Hyong-keun’s canvases are hung on the wall in a row, carrying out their duties in silence. The unartistic extremity of art that Donald Judd long sought after was realized by the artists at Marfa in their own ways.

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III. 

In a way, ‘life’ is about ‘relationships’ for everyone. All beings can each individually exist as themselves, but at the same time, each infiltrates, reacts to, often closely connects with, and even mutually depends and relies on another. Therefore, in total they create an energy that is not sufficient to merely describe as 'causing influence'.

 

Many people today say that they are intrigued by Yun Hyong-keun’s paintings without knowing the reason. They call it the ‘power of art.’ If it really is so, it might be because ‘art’ touches upon universal issues concerning our everyday lives, even when it is seemingly standing at a far distance.

 

Yun Hyong-keun’s paintings nonchalantly touch upon the principles of our lives in various aspects. Amongst these, there is one indisputable point that is noteworthy - at the end of the day, it is our ‘relationship’ with other beings that defines our lives.