“Through my works, I intend to show fragrance simmering like haze that personally blooms from my heart. Certain aroma that is beyond the distinct materiality seems to be manifested to a dash of colour that emerges from somewhere beyond something transparent. What I do is, I paste clear synthetic resins onto soft fabric and bind them together. Then, I make U-shaped structures and glue it on the canvas according to some kind of arrangement, and I cover its surface with acrylics. In other words, I make up a space on top of the two-dimensional canvas, endow the space with meaning, and lastly enjoy all the accidents which are made by light and shadow within the space. Lines in a drawing, basically, compose a memory of lines; I want to observe how those lines in a drawing evolve into the space. At the same time, I intend to explore how I can, on the contrary, reach the subconscious of the art starting from a space, and personally, how to transform the ‘hazy fragrance‘ into the plastic element.”[1]

The works of the Korean artist Nam Tchun Mo could be described as concrete, and thus placed directly in the European tradition of concrete art. His sensitive works are undoubtedly inspired and mentally permeated by it, but in comparison with European art prove to be a synthesis of the formal and the aesthetic that unites the two cultures with each other in an evocative way. The resulting tension can be regarded as essential for the understanding of his art.

If, for this purpose, one looks at the history of European tradition, the essential connecting factors can be found in the definition of concrete art itself, which can be linked to the De Stijl movement. In 1917, it was conceptually and formally developed by the Dutchman Theo van Doesburg, an important companion of Piet Mondrian. After the liberation of figurative painting towards abstraction, which Wassily Kandinsky had already formulated in 1911 in his groundbreaking book “On the Spiritual in Art”, these approaches did not go far enough for van Doesburg and some other European artists. It was rather by exploring the Russian “Suprematism”, developed shortly afterwards around Kazimir Malevich, that they recognized the fundamentals for the further abstraction and radical simplification of the visual language. These revolutionary tendencies were accompanied by major social and political upheavals and it was crucial, especially after the collapse of the world order and the artistic ideals that had been worn down and destroyed during the First World War, that initially purely rational criteria were to prevail. “Abstract” did not go far enough for the artists of the De Stijl movement, because there were still too many feelings and emotions imaginable here, and so they kept on searching for a more scientifically based visual language. Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian pursued the goal of radically simplifying art and, as it were, reducing it to its basic elements. The philosophical foundation for this was provided by Theo van Doesburg in his 1918 manifesto, stating among others:

“1. There is an old and a new consciousness of age. The old one is directed towards the individual. The new one is directed towards the universal. The struggle of the individual against the universal may be seen both in the world war and in modern art.

2. The war is destroying the old world with its content: individual predominance in every field.”[2]

It is more than evident that the world order was rethought and intended to be reflected in a radically simplified pictorial order. Mondrian and van Doesburg developed this with horizontal and vertical black lines and the reduction to the three primary colours red, blue and yellow as well as the so-called “non-colours” black and white. Hence, any emotionality in the art was negated and at the same time the attention was solely focused on harmony and colour tones. Science and rationality were also supposed to define art and provide guiding standards: “Every image is a concept of colour. Before the work is transformed into matter, it fully exists in the consciousness. It is also necessary that the realization shows a technical perfection equal to that of the intellectual design. We work with the factors of mathematics and science, that is, with the means of thought.”[3]

Eventually, in Paris in 1929, Mondrian and van Doesburg joined the newly founded artist group “Cercle et Carré”, at the invitation of the Belgian Michel Seuphor and Wassily Kandinsky. However, the group dissolved already one year later, as it met with little public interest and even the published magazine of the same name was not noticed by the critics. Van Doesburg temporarily published the journal “Art Concret” (1930) together with Jean Hélion and founded – among others with Vantongerloo – the artist group “Abstraction-Création”, which lasted until 1937. Van Doesburg once again formulates his fundamental principles of concrete art, which distance themselves from all references to the real world: “Concrete art is the designation for an art without any relationship to visual reality, in which the pictorial elements are neither a reflection of nature nor symbolically intended, but in an interplay of (mostly geometric) forms only signify themselves.”[4] In the only edition of “Art Concret” published in 1930, he formulates together with several other artists[5] his most essential constants for concrete art: "1. Art is universal. 2. A work of art must be planned rationally before it is executed. It must not be inspired by nature or feelings. (lyricism, dramaticism and symbolism are excluded.) 3. Art should only be constructed by purely pictorial elements, such as planes and colours. The individual pictorial element (and thus art) only has its own significance. 4. The construction of the picture should be simple and visually easy to grasp. 5. The painting technique should be mechanical, precise and anti-impressionistic. 6. Absolute clarity is in the foreground.[6]

Much later – after another devastating war – Zurich-based concrete artist Max Bill summed up the movement of concrete art in a more differentiated way: "the aim of concrete art is to develop objects for mental use, the same the way people create objects for material use. […] concrete art, as a last consequence, is the pure expression of harmonious measure and principle. it arranges systems and gives life to these arrangements by artistic means.“[7]

Nam Tchun Mo only gradually grew into abstract or concrete art in the course of his creative phases as an artist. His development ranges from abstract-gestural painting to concrete art, formulated both in chromatic and plastic terms. Today, he is one of the most important South Korean artists dedicated to monochrome art, who with it have initiated one of the most significant movements that still radiates to the present day. “Nam Chun-Mo is an artist representing the new generation of Korean monochrome movement Dansaekhwa. Recently, he won the 1st prize of the foundation Hachonghyn rewarding a great master of the movement Dansaekhwa.”[8] This artistic movement describes a group of artists who have been exploring monochrome painting in Korea since the 1970s. “By the late 1960s, the first signs of Dansaekhwa had begun to emerge and the style slowly began to take root in the early 1970s. Certainly, it is possible to identify a Dansaekhwa approach in the works of Lee Dong-Yeob and Hur Hwang in the first exhibition of ‘Indépendants’ in Seoul in 1972. A close relationship developed between the group of artists who participated in the ‘École de Seoul’, an annual exhibition series founded by Park in 1975, while the artist Lee Ufan’s frequent travels between Korea and Japan had resulted in the dissemination of the ideas of Japanese Mono-ha in Korea, with Lee’s status and popularity ensuring his artistic influence was broad-reaching. By the mid-1970s, Dansaekhwa had become a dominant force in Korea.”[9] In view of the works of Tchun Mo, these borrowings are not yet exhausted, because the current works in particular show direct references to Hard-edge painting following the American example, such as Ad Reinhardt or Frank Stella. Nevertheless, it will become clear that Tchun Mo will never establish their cool rationality in his works and instead unfolds a higher spirituality by means of colour tones.

In order to understand Tchun Mo’s developments and changes, a brief look at his drawings from the late 1990s proves to be enlightening. Contrary to his current works, the gestural element still plays a decisive role in them. Everything evolves from a fluid gestural style that is formulated in an abstract way, but at the same time permits approaches towards the figurative. A clear line is prevailing that emerges from the tradition of Asian ink painting. In contrast to the present day, however, Tchun Mo here draws on the emotion, so that the lines appear much more hand-written as well as uneven, and show numerous shades from grey to black. Frequently, Tchun Mo interweaves lines with each other, thus creating an idiosyncratic grid pattern that solidifies the painting ground. Something is already manifesting itself here that will be continued in a completely different way in his current works. In his graphic latticework he creates an abstract pictorial space of particular depth, although it remains indifferent. With blurred colours and trickles of colour having run over the canvas, numerous traces of the coincidental dig their way into the surface of the picture and develop their own pattern in the pictorial space, so that another, quasi entirely impenetrable level is created. In some of these compositions, corporeal figurations appear that are reminiscent of the human body or something biomorphic, without necessarily creating a substantial connection with the painting ground. Frequently, patterns and figures remain largely isolated from each other. After this decisive year of 1996, when Tchun Mo had intensively explored the Asian pictorial tradition, he completely detached himself from gestural abstraction and began to address the “skeleton” – the inner framework – of painting. Apparently quite literally, he now dissolves the two-dimensionality of the pictorial body in favour of a three-dimensional construction. Here he formally advances to the construction of the pictorial space by building U-shaped braces, which he creates from rice paper or fabrics and glue, before colouring them. The result is a pictorial body of its own, which is not only designed to be three-dimensional, but also consists of delicate braces that from a distance seem like fine lines. Henceforth, it becomes clear that the works are a synthesis of line drawings, body contours and colour fields, merging Asian traditions and European principles of the abstract-concrete art.

With their concentrated power, the artist’s current works prove to be graphic, sculptural and colour-based modulations. They evolve along the basic principles of concrete art by pointing to nothing other than themselves and bearing no reference whatsoever to nature or everyday life. Rather, their visual appearance originates in the sublimation of the aesthetic principles of a concept of the world that is trained through nature, but has renounced all too obvious relations with it – they inevitably follow the principle of universality already mentioned with van Doesburg. Nevertheless, the current works of Tchun Mo are in particular understandable in their entire dimension, if one derives them from his artistic beginnings and gestural-abstract drawings. The decisive factor here is and has always been the style of the chosen linearity, which for its part makes it possible to create a pattern of its own and thus to tighten the pictorial space with the network of lines. In this way, line and space, as well as colour and space, intertwine and refer to each other. Lines and braces, sometimes strictly geometric and serially arranged, sometimes in a seemingly loose criss-cross arrangement, always form a symbiotic unity with the colour, so that lines, corporality and colour space merge into one inseparable entity.

The density of the sculpturally arranged lines at the same time conveys the perceived dimension of space, which – unlike in the earlier gestural-abstract works – is not purely an imaginary space. Rather, both dimensions of perception unfold before the viewer’s eyes: that of physical space, which is measured in real terms through the braces and the surface of the work, and that of imaginary space, which the work itself unfolds through plasticity and colour space and which is in fact not tangible or measurable. The result rather is a resonance chamber of its own, which is sounded out as if by imaginary sound waves, but not strictly described. This resonance of space unfolds its own effect, which now is conveyed and enhanced in the more recent works through the brilliance of the most subtly selected colours, which again for their part radiate and shine.

The decisive factor here is undoubtedly the fact that Tchun Mo has developed his own unique technique in order to detach the lines from their two-dimensionality and to model them as a kind of sculptural structure. This is done by processing fabrics, which he hardens with polyester and then forms into a U-shape. The dimensions of these U-shapes are constant, but not static in the true sense of the word, because particularly at the individual heights the shapes are slightly irregularly frayed – just as much as the artist sometimes allows it in his current drawings with slight blurrings, and therefore minimal aspects of coincidence are still incorporated. In a further step, Tchun Mo combines these U-shaped elements to form a whole picture, in which serial arrangements and opposing lines of movement come into effect. Many of his works are strictly geometric, so that line stands next to line and only a change of direction allows the colours to change. For the viewer, a perception of the colour and the individual ridges emerges, and finally also one of the realization that all lines originate from a three-dimensional construction. Picture surface, pictorial body and pictorial space at this moment merge into a synthesis.[10] Many of these works Tchun Mo composes in monochrome, immerses them in a deep, velvety blue violet, dull white or flaming red. The monochromy enhances the visual unity of these three pictorial levels and at the same time elevates them through the power of the light, which in turn evokes shadows and increases the plasticity as well as the different, albeit only gradually perceivable shades of colour. The viewer is not distracted by anything, but can become acquainted with the depths of the pictorial body in a long, intensive process of seeing. The colours begin to breathe, fluctuate floatingly in space and create their own reality, which yet refuses the ultimate access. There always remains something incomprehensible and irrational about these works. And when Chiba Shigeo, for example, remarks: „… it is a new picture that achieves illusionism without relying on the methods of abstract paintings, and secondly, because it is formed from the most basic elements that make a painting a painting: colour, line and light,“[11] then this represents only a small part of the truth that becomes apparent in the sculptural pictures of Tchun Mo. Rather, it extends far beyond this and is elementalized in an incomparable aura of each individual work, which cannot be measured in conceptual assignments to the purely material appearance of the works. There is always more, a spiritual power, energy and dynamics that characterize these works. The art historian Yun Jin-Seop aptly describes: “His work opens itself as a body for the viewer’s pure experience of perception. The colour inside the hard outer skin of the transparent synthetic resin is a way to approach this body.”[12]

Precisely because Tchun Mo seeks his own synthesis of surface, body, colour, space and light, it is important that he invariably explores very different modulations with his works. The plasticity of his works is not decorative playfulness, but a conscious and cautious approach of the space (cf. ”Beam”, 2015 and “Stroke-Beam”, 2016)[13], which thus becomes part of the physical sensation of the work itself. Light and shadow elevate these phenomena. In this way, bodies and lines are equally created in space, which – at least in a few recent works – also refer to the seemingly coincidental, to the sketchy graphic hatching of the early drawings (cf. “Spring-Line”, 2015).[14]

In his large installation in the main hall of the Daegue Museum, Tchun Mo formulates his relationship to space in a far more striking way, where he interweaves formations of reliefs on the walls and in the room in such a way that visitors can walk between them, and the entire space merges into the work of art. Here he unfolds a pictorial and artistic language that is closely based on the Korean tradition of making paper, which seems like parchment and has a slight translucence. The unostentatiousness of the colour, almost being negated, is essential for the concentration on the spatial valuations and shifts that result from the sculptural works in space. “The color is sort of a neutral zone. It is neither intensely bright nor dark but delicately subdued and toned down. The sentiment of moderation advocated among Koreans is embedded in the color. The worldly wisdom of moderation is honored not only in China but also in East-Asian countries including Korea, and deeply associated with their view of nature.”[15] The large room installation in the Daegue Museum is reminiscent of the spatial concepts of Richard Serra, who likes to constrict space in order to widen it again, who sets claustrophobia against freedom, steering both into each other, seemingly without any seams. Tchun Mo’s work, however, does not gain an unbridgeable constriction, but lightness and transparency of light, which floods the room as a whole. It is not materiality and something raw that are brought forward here, but rather their reappraisal and – at least – mental transformation into the luminous and immaterial.

             The secrets of his works will not be disclosed in their entirety, but they will retain their own destiny in the auratic, through which all his knowledge of the early Korean works of art finds its origin in nature. This origin can be seen not only in the colours, but also in the evolutionary dynamics and repetition, which reveal the principles of becoming and fading. “Yet, a closer look at his unique manner conceiving a Korean-specific independent heart reveals a “mindset” towards nature.”[16] The term “transcendental mindset”, introduced by Yoon into the contemplation of Tchun Mo’s works, ultimately seems to paraphrase everything that narrow concepts are unable to identify. In turn, it refers to the postulate formulated by Theo van Doesburg: “art is universal” and thus transrational and transcendent beyond all borders.

 

 

Prof. Dr. Beate Reifenscheid

Director Ludwig Museum, Koblenz (Germany)

 

 

[1]Nam Tchun Mo, http://www.koreatomorrow.org/en/project/nam-tchun-mo/

[2] Theo van Doesburg, Manifest I von 1918, in: De Stijl, Vol. 2, Nr. 1 (November 1918)  p.4

[3] Willy Rotzler: Annäherung an das Konkrete, in: Peter Volkwein (Hrsg.) Museum für Konkrete Kunst Ingolstadt. 1993, pp. 47

[4] Theo van Doesburg, Art Concret, 1930.

[5]  Jointly signed by the artists Otto Gustav Carlsund (Sweden), Theo van Doesberg (The Netherlands), Jean Hélion (France), Léon Arthur Tutundjian (Armenia) and Marcel Wantz (France).

[6]Theo van Doesburg, Manifest, 1930.

[7] Max Bill, in: exhib. cat. Züricher Konkrete Kunst, 1949, preface.

[8] http://www.artloft.eu/pdfs/NamTchunMo.pdf.

[9] https://frieze.com/article/skin-surface.

[10] Cf. the works from the Beam-series from 2010-2014, in: exhib. cat. Nam, Tchun Mo, Recent works 2009-2014, Gallery 604, Busan, Korea 2014

[11] Chiba Shigeo, An exquisite aroma in the heart, in: exhib. cat. Nam, Tchun Mo, ibidem, p.12

[12] Yun Jin-Seop, Der Berührungspunkt von Körper und Wahrnehmung, in: exhib. cat. Nam Tchun-Mo, Selected works 1998-2009, Galerie Uwe Sacksofsky, Heidelberg; Cais Gallery, Seoul; Seok Gallery, Daegue 2010, p.70

[13]Exhib. cat. Nam Tchun Mo, Selected works 2012-2016, Leeahn Gallery, Seoul, 2015, pp.28-29; p.48, p.46 and p.64

[14] Ibidem, p.38

[15] Yoon Sin Sup, Towards a third “quality”, in: exhib. cat. Nam Tchun Mo, ibidem, p.9

[16] Yoon, ibidem, p.11