SAN FRANCISCO — They look like sprouts pushing their heads through frozen ground. Paint squeezed through the back of coarse burlap juts out, each blob wearing its own expression. Only by passing through the tangled weave of the sackcloth can it meet the viewer. The paint has no personality of its own, yet every mark stands with confidence. The physical nature of the material and the artist's action become one, and the result is a work of art.
The first large-scale North American retrospective of Ha Chong-hyun, 90, opened on the 25th local time at the Asian Art Museum (AAM) in San Francisco. For more than half a century, the veteran painter has explored variations on his "Conjunction" series, made using a back-pressure method that pushes paint from behind the picture surface.
At a VIP opening for board members on the 23rd, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie attended and delivered congratulatory remarks. As AAM Director Soyoung Lee explained the technique — cutting up burlap sacks that the U.S. military had used to carry army rice, turning them into canvases, applying paint to the back and pressing it through to the front with a roller — Lurie listened closely, then repeatedly photographed the works, showing keen interest. The exhibition traces more than 60 years of Ha's artistic path with 50 works, including new pieces. It reveals the many facets of an artist long categorized as a leading figure of Dansaekhwa, or Korean monochrome painting, and explains why he is called a pioneer of Korean contemporary art. Born in 1935, Ha began his career amid the rapid social change that followed the Korean War. His work, which moved from Art Informel through geometric abstraction and experimental art to Dansaekhwa, runs parallel to the upheavals of modern Korean history.
The first work visitors encounter, "Work C" from 1962, is the oldest piece in the exhibition. An example of Art Informel — an impassioned form of abstraction that maximizes the sense of material — it vividly conveys the anger of a young man in the postwar years. "White Paper on Urban Planning," made in 1967, drew attention as an unusual piece framed with the lower part of its surface folded like a pleat. The geometric abstraction Ha showed around this time reflects an era of modernization and urbanization just getting underway. 1967 was the year South Korea's second five-year economic development plan began. In the folded canvas, one senses a sensory awareness of a situation in which highways had been cut through the land, shortening distances so that long journeys could suddenly be made in little time. In the "Birth" series from the same year, orderly geometric precision incorporates the weaving methods of traditional straw mats, dancheong patterns and the five traditional Korean colors, evoking the origin of a new beginning.
In 1969, Ha joined the Korean Avant Garde Association (AG) as a founding member, entering a period of experimentation that broke with conventional painting formats and used everyday materials. "Counterpoint," made in 1971, places a stack of blank paper of the same size and height alongside newspapers that had been censored by the military government, testifying to the constraints of the era. "Work 73-13," from 1973 and on loan from the Guggenheim Museum in New York, is an earth-toned painting bound with barbed wire. The oppression of the times and the pain of a divided homeland are laid bare. The North-South tension cast over the taut coiled-spring painting mirrors the society of its day.
The technique of pushing paint from the back of the burlap so that it seeps through to the front began in 1974. An early example can be seen in "Conjunction 74-26," held by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The artist has said that sandbags were used to build combat positions, but that after the war U.S. troops would fill sacks with relief supplies such as grain and bring them over. That is why he projected the spirit of the times and the texture of daily life onto plain sackcloth so closely tied to life and death. Chinese and Korean traditional painting also have techniques of pressing pigment from the back of the surface and of applying color to the back so it shows through to the front. But the materials and intentions are entirely different. The dark brown of walls in Andong's Hahoe Village and the white of mist on the mid-slopes of Jirisan after rain are colors Ha mixed himself. Tools the artist made by hand — for crushing, pushing and spreading paint instead of using a brush — are also on display, to underscore what sets Ha apart: his emphasis on physical, bodily action.
Kim Sun-jung, artistic director of Art Sonje Center, who organized Ha's collateral exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale and his 2025 solo show at Art Sonje Center, served as guest curator. "Rather than confining Ha to the label of a Dansaekhwa painter, I designed the exhibition to show that he is an artist with a wide range of practices," Kim said. Director Lee said a security guard who has worked at the museum for more than 40 years told her it was the most special work they had ever seen. "Ha's work redefines the way we understand abstraction," she said. "This visceral, powerful experience, which goes beyond a purely visual language, will reach American audiences as well." Lee holds a bachelor's degree and master's and doctoral degrees in art history from Columbia University. She also worked for 15 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she was its first curator dedicated to Korean art and helped expand the reach of Korean art.
SK and the Podo Museum, whose executive director is Kim Hee-young, stepped forward as lead sponsors to make the exhibition possible. They decided to support it, according to the organizers, because the Asian Art Museum became the first museum in the United States to establish a department dedicated to Korean art in 1989 and to appoint a dedicated curator, broadening understanding of Korean art in the country, and because they shared the exhibition's aim of casting new light on a master of Korean contemporary art. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the sister-city relationship between Seoul and San Francisco. Starting Oct. 3, RM of BTS will also open an exhibition presenting his personal collection for the first time in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), putting Korean art in the spotlight across the city.
The Ha Chong-hyun retrospective at the Asian Art Museum runs through Jan. 25 of next year.
