Mountain High
Echoes in the Small Mountain:
Park Dae-sung and the West Coast
Asian Art Museum
Ongoing – July 13
The Asian Art Museum continues its tradition of bringing the lucky residents of the Bay Area artworks never before seen outside of Asia. This time is a double whammy, original artwork and original subject matter. Prior to this exhibition, Park has never before attempted painting mountains outside of his native Korea.
Park’s painting of Yosemite. The size of these works are intended to imbue the viewer with the grandeur of the object in its natural surroundings.
The never-before-seen painting was inspired by the vistas of Yosemite. Alongside the new compositions based on California landscapes, the exhibition features three epically scaled paintings gifted to the Museum collection two decades ago. All of these works are shown together here for the first time.
L2R: Park, Cave of Enlightenment (detail); Blue Mountain and White Cloud; Magnificent View of Samneung
Park (pen name Sosan 소산, “Small Mountain”) is a renowned contemporary artist credited with reinventing the techniques of traditional Korean ink painting. He was born in 1945, the official end of both the Japanese colonization of Korea and WWII. In 1950, during the Korean War, his parents were killed by Communist soldiers and he found solace in painting. Self-taught, Park has spent time in China and walked the Silk Road. Since the 1970s, Park has traveled throughout his homeland to paint or sketch famed places. His works are frequently painted on hanji, traditional mulberry paper.
Snow at Bulguk Temple (Detail)
Park leaves the mulberry paper untouched, to capture the whiteness of the snow.
His works conveys the powerful feeling of experiencing a monumental landscape, using energetic brushwork and inventive visual strategies to express the emotions stirred by nature’s grandeur. The painting of Korea’s Diamond Mountains compresses the mountain range into a single awe-inspiring rocky mass, creating what exhibition curator Yoon-Jee Choi calls “a panoramic mind-picture.”
For more information about this exhibition, click here.
