Untitled

Trained as an ink painter and part of Munghimhoe (묵림회, Ink Forest Group), Kwon Young-woo made works that disrupt mark-making and gestural abstraction norms. In the 1960s he began exploring the three-dimensional transformation of hanji (“Korean paper”)—confronting the elevated status of painting and the strict division between painting and sculpture. Traditionally, paper was revered as support for ink, but Kwon tore, pasted, and molded it, thrusting it to the forefront.

Working in Paris in the 1980s, Kwon reintroduced ink and color while still emphasizing the paper. Here, gray-blue radiates from the center, darkening vertical slashes as if by capillary action—yet the darkest “line” is a torn horizontal gap. Kwon applied color on the reverse, letting it seep through to the front, a challenge to the glamorized act of paint application.