Filling by Deducting: Taming the Spirit
Artist Seo-bo Park began his “Ecriture” series as a young father in 1967, inspired by his son’s handwriting practice. He uses acrylic paint on Hanji, the traditional Korean paper, which creates an earthy texture through which the Park attempts to achieve appeasement, unpossessment, and embeddedness of his life with nature. The citrus colors of a work like Ecriture №071114 (2007) can almost palpably pervade a room with the essence of lemon and lime, while Ecriture №090705 (2009) evokes a sense of reverence or contemplative silence.
This master’s oeuvre appears to provide the keys to much of his life philosophy, which is guided by his unconscious communication with his past, present, and future.Born in 1931 and raised in South Korea, Park was a fugitive during the Korean War years, 1950–1953. The outbreak of the Korean War saw the government reneging on its promise to only conscript male students who did not fulfill the military training and started to conscript even those who completed it[1]. Park had finished the required military service and not wanting to enlist in the military, he went into hiding and changed his identity. His Ecriture series not only powerfully encapsulates his coping with that unstable experience but also reflects his perseverance. In the years following the war, a rapidly changing Korea was also something he was left to take in. His history has heavily influenced his works.
Hanji is handmade from the bark of mulberry trees and is known for its ventilation for the circulation of air, usefulness as insulation, and imperviousness to water. Because of these qualities it was once commonly used for windows in Korean homes, keeping them warm in winter, cool in summer, and safe in all weather conditions. This paper, which Park deliberately chose for his Ecriture series, reflects the artist’s longing for a home of stability and safety.
Park has said that his obsession with Hanji is largely due to its durability, which seems to resonate with the artist’s resilience and perseverance during his years on the run from the Korean government, as do the repeating patterns of the Ecriture works. Park chose Hanji paper because of the deep connection that he feels with it. As William James suggests, Park’s thoughts while making these works must belong with his other thoughts[2](memories of his past), making his artistic practice entirely personal. “Every ‘state’ tends to be part of a personal consciousness,” James says, so therefore even sharing the same experience at the same time will result in completely different responses — thus Park’s Ecritures as the result of “his” experience of the war and fugitive life. By exploring Hanji’s unique qualities across his oeuvre, Park attempts to encompass his memories of his life in the way the Hanji paper absorbs droplets of paint to merge with the paper, thus letting his spirit live forever soaked in the work. In his Ecriture series, he captures his past, which has now become part of what makes him. He states that “an artist must reflect on one’s own time period, not encompassing a sense of historicity.”[3] So by encompassing, I mean his constant practice to not just to accept his past but to let it rebuild within him, filling him with strengths.
Up close, it becomes clear that both paintings have numerous vertical lines that result in a palpable, three-dimensional texture. But from a distance the paintings simply look like large, juxtaposed rectangles of different colors. Here, Park establishes his philosophy: what may seem like a complex, rough-surfaced problem that may be considered dramatic in our personal lives is barely noticeable in the grand scheme of the universe. Looking at the painting from a distance provides a sense of universality — oneness. We no longer notice the corrugated vertical lines. Instead, a powerful unity fills our experience followed by a sudden serenity. A sensation that nothing matters anymore, that every confining state of being will be freed.
Park is known as the father of Dansaekhwa, which is the Korean style of monochrome painting. But there is a clear distinction between Dansaekhwa and monochrome of the western paintings. Seen as letting his flow of consciousness guide him through a meditative painting practice to achieve total non-possession, self-emptiness in order to ascend to an even higher realm, Park renders repeated corrugated vertical lines upon his Hanji paper. Park calls his art making process “spiritual training,”[4] which is to reach the emptiness of himself, a process required before refilling himself with cleansed, pure, authentic, rudimentary fragments of his revitalized spirit which he is able to act upon and practice in reaction to. His paintings become the “remnants of spiritual development.”[5]
The artist continues to take part in the surroundings of a rapidly changing world constantly refilling himself with newly imbued inspiration for his paintings. Our experience of Park’s paintings becomes a time of soul healing. He offers a sense of complete vacancy and solace permeates the moment. The solidary repetition of the pattern interrupted by a single full color tone or by different colors becomes strangely calming. In this way Park continues to provide a balm for people living fiercely in modern society under the stress and pressure which is more clearly portrayed in his most recent paintings created in the 21st century. In comparison to his earlier paintings, which appear almost as colorless, repetitious exercises in patterning, his recent paintings render these patterns with more color, vibrancy, vividness and energy.
The use of colors was an aesthetic decision to make his art act as “a therapeutic in these times of stress.” Park urges us to listen to ourselves instead of being haunted by other people’s opinions. It is as if he is inviting us to join him in the practice of spiritual journey, perhaps to free ourselves. He provides us with a moment to pause and some space to breathe in silence. For him, his role in this ever-changing world of technology, information, and people, in which everyone’s life is a spiderweb of different complexities, is firm and explicit. As he wishes, his “picture [has been] an instrument of healing” for many of us in the constellation of unexpected events of life. He penetrates the unspoken phenomena of our perpetual search to seize the moment — for rest, for serenity.
Footnote:
[1] Park Seo-Bo’s Ecriture — Everything you need to know. (2020, January 30). Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://publicdelivery.org/park-seo-bo-ecriture/
[2] James, W. (n.d.). Classics in the History of Psychology. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/jimmy11.htm
[3] Park Seo-Bo’s Ecriture — Everything you need to know. (2020, January 30). Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://publicdelivery.org/park-seo-bo-ecriture/
[4] GaleriePerrotin. 2019. PARK SEO-BO ‘ECRITURE’ AT PERROTIN NEW YORK. Video. https://youtu.be/G72aGv07Ec0.
[5] Ibid.
