A 91-year-old artist's unique method of pushing paint through hemp is celebrated in London
Ha Chong-Hyun, a pioneer of the Dansaekhwa movement, developed a technique in the 1970s of pushing oil paint through the back of hemp fabric. He has continued this method, creating monochrome works that emphasize the interaction between artist and material. A London exhibition will showcase his decades-spanning career.
Ha Chong-Hyun was born in 1935 in Sancheong, Korea, during the Japanese occupation, and spent part of his childhood in Japan before returning after liberation in 1945. His early life was marked by tragedy—he lost his grandmother and a young sibling during a violent storm at sea on the journey home. He continued drawing throughout these upheavals, and his formative years unfolded against the Korean war, postwar poverty, and military dictatorship that lasted until 1988.
The artist's back-pressure method emerged in the early 1970s and has remained his signature approach ever since. Every work is titled "Conjunction" with a date number, reflecting his view of the piece as a meeting between artist and material. The upcoming Lisson Gallery exhibition in London coincides with his first North American museum retrospective at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, marking growing international recognition of the Dansaekhwa movement.
This exhibition may broaden Western appreciation of Dansaekhwa as a distinct movement rather than a regional echo of American minimalism. For younger artists and students, Ha's decades-long commitment to a single technique could serve as a model of artistic discipline and material exploration. The timing—alongside his first North American retrospective—may also strengthen cultural exchange between Korea and the West, potentially increasing interest in other overlooked Asian postwar artists whose work carries specific historical and political weight.