Yun Hyong-keun

Judd Foundation presents Yun Hyong-keun, an exhibition of paintings by Yun Hyong-keun at 101 Spring Street in New York. The exhibition reconstructs Hyong-keun Yun 1993, one of the artist’s first solo exhibitions in the United States, organized by Donald Judd and Locks Gallery. Yun Hyong-keun is presented in recognition of the public opening of the Yun Hyong-keun House and organized in partnership with the Estate of Yun Hyong-keun.

Yun Hyong-keun (1928–2007) is one of the most important South Korean painters of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1970s, Yun employed a technique of superimposing pigment and color on unprimed canvas. Later that decade, he began using ultramarine and umber as the sole colors in his paintings, soaking and spreading the paint directly on cloth or linen canvas. The initial brushstrokes determined the work’s composition: a single rectangle, a large area, or columns on either side of the canvas. Yun would then layer the pigment over many sessions, building up density and color. The paintings would vary depending on the time allowed for the pigment to dry, the quality of the unprimed material of the canvas, and the quantity of oil used in the mixing of the paint. Some took years to complete.

Yun was primarily concerned with the colors of nature, specifically those found in the landscape that had a “discolored or decolorized” quality, including the colors of trees, stones, and soil. Umber, the primary color found in his work, is one of the hues of soil. He was also interested in the original properties of materials, such as those of unprimed canvas and the qualities of the fibers. Color and texture—and their accumulated density in the canvas, due to repeated brushstrokes across time—were the main aspects of Yun’s work. “True beauty comes from capturing the eternal texture and color directly from nature,” he wrote. “That’s what I strive to express in my paintings.”

The first exhibition of Yun’s work at 101 Spring Street (November 14, 1993–January 15, 1994) consisted of six paintings selected by Yun and Judd. In Yun Hyong-keun, five of the original paintings are presented alongside another painting from the same series, made in the same year and of the same size, recalling the 1993 presentation.

Image: Yun Hyong-keun, Burnt Umber & Ultramarine Blue, 1993. Oil on linen, 180.3 x 227.1 cm. Art © Yun Seong-ryeol. Courtesy of PKM Gallery.