For over 60 years, I have followed the singular theme of Simultaneity in the construction of my artistic world.

Simultaneity is the visualization of the invisible, “the pursuit of identical and equal time and space,” which allows the events in the world of Nirvana to manifest through me. My works explore the strict formative order and space of harmony and aim to simultaneously capture the actions and spirit of physical time. 

In the 1960s, as a member of Origin and the Korean Avant-Garde Association (AG), I protested against the academism advocated by the institution of figurative art. By introducing cold, geometric abstract paintings as an alternative to the atypical Informel style of abstract art, I officially ushered in the era of modernist painting in Korea. Although criticism, incomprehension, ignorance, and prejudice against the new art form were widespread at the time of its emergence, I devoted myself to creating works of contemporary art that demonstrated Korean identity and tradition, accompanied by my sense of duty to the avant-garde as an artist whose mission has always been to be at the forefront of the times.

I was born and raised in Seoul. I grew up in a hanok (traditional Korean house) that was passed down from generation to generation, where I also raised my children. The doors sealed with changhoji (traditional Korean window paper), a material characteristic of the hanok, have become a part of me, along with the geometric, ribbed window frames; the subtle beauty of moonlight on the changhoji doors; the sense of the empty space created by the white changhoji on the doors of the main room, bed room, and guest room; the softness of the overlapped layers of white changhoji; the white porcelains placed around the house, especially its shapes, lines, shades of white; the folk paintings on the changhoji-pasted walls of the attic; the flowers in the garden by the well; the smell of the fermenting doenjang (soybean paste) and gochujang (red pepper paste) from the jangdokdae (a place for tranditional Korean crocks); the unforgettable sound of my mother pounding the laundry flat; the sound of the wind-bells from the mountaintop temples; and the sound of the wind and the creek.

The colors in my paintings serve less as colors themselves but more as symbols of a “filtered state,” which is a clean (whitened) and composed mentality. And through my ascetic working process, the aesthetic of han (an internalized feeling of compressed sorrow and resentment), which is unique to Korea is sublimated into a spirit of my own.

My early geometric abstract works from the 1960s were an expression of my will to rise above outdated art and pursue diversity. They marked a challenging period in which I experimented with and asserted my authentic formal language in order to chart an exclusive artistic course. In other words, they were attempts to escape from natural subjects and to pursue pure forms and colors. In the 1970s and 1980s, I immersed myself in the world of reductive painting, a controlled space created by strictly formal compositions and geometricism. “Reductive” in this sense means “regressive” as objects essentially tend to return to their original state. Since the 1990s, I have moved toward freer forms of expression that seek to affirm a transcendental presence through the diffusion of space, time, and my mentality. My works maintain the aesthetics of order, but within the scope of negative space.

Recently, I have been searching for a meditative space for contemplation, a world of sensibility that integrates the aspects of my previous work—the sensibility of control, self-restoration, and freedom—and absolute beauty of Simultaneity.

Suh Seung-Won, 2022