Artwork Description:
Ha Chong-Hyun is a pioneering member of the Korean Dansaekhwa, or “Monochrome painting,” movement, dedicating his career to engage with discourses around institutional critique and advocating for the Korean avant-garde. In his hallmark Conjunction series, Ha Chong-Hyun pushes thick paint through the backs of loosely woven hemp canvases, creating a textured surface that is entirely unique to his practice. The term “conjunction” signifies the unmediated meeting of the artist’s two most important elements–his method and his materials–and has been a decades-long project. Ha first began making his Conjunction series in the 1970s in post-war Korea, where his use of hemp, a robust material commonly used for transporting goods during the war and subsequent reconstruction, distinguished his work from the traditional Western canvas.

While the repetitive diagonal slashes of Conjunction 85-11 might initially resemble scored clay, a closer look reveals these marks are areas of concentrated paint that extend from the surface, giving the piece a sculptural and tactile quality. Crafted with custom tools, such as wooden sticks, these downward-sloping lines lead the viewer's eye across the canvas, where the soft tones of paint engage with the warm hues of the raw hemp at all four edges. Here, the natural grid of the woven hemp aligns harmoniously with the markings in the paint, emphasizing the interplay between texture and structure.

40 HO