On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
People
Suh Se Ok Korean
Not on view
People encapsulates all four themes of this exhibition—lines, people, places, and things. Trained in ink painting and calligraphy, Suh Se Ok here used repetitive strokes to create a complex image that looks like an abstracted mountainous landscape. Yet the pointed units are the character for “human” (人, in). The choice of the word “people” for the title, and not “person” or “man,” compels us to consider both the part and the whole, the individual and the collective.
Suh focused on material, medium, and the legacy of ink painting, and was part of an influential artist association of ink painters called Munghimhoe 묵림회, Ink Forest Group) that grappled with issues of style and materiality in relation to modernism and cultural identity.
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