Among the prominent masters of Korean contemporary art, Park Seo-Bo is without a doubt one of the most important figures. Over a long and difficult creative process lasting nearly half a century, Park continuously worked on his Ecriture series. Throughout different stages of his life, he consistently created new breakthroughs in his artistic techniques, highlighting Park’s renowned status among artists.
In the mid-1960s, Park used pencils to create repetitive lines on wet paint. Starting from the 1980s, Park began to use hanji, a soft paper made from mulberry bark. In addition to the more diverse colour series after 2000, Park Seo-Bo found his own way from one end to the other. Created in 2006, Ecriture No.060427 is a magnificent show of colour, as hints of purple peek through bright pink grains. Using hanji that was soaked for three months, Park glued it to the canvas layer by layer, using sticks, bamboo rulers and other tools to create irregular and uneven lines across the surface of the hanji and giving the flat work a three-dimensional relief effect. This serves to materialise a visual experience that cannot be constructed by simply using oil and acrylic paints.
As the viewer stands before Park Seo-Bo’s work, one allows the six senses to move with the multiple layers of hanji along with the unnamed colours created by the refraction of light. Through this we can truly experience the uniqueness of Park Seo-Bo’s work. The work appears still from a distance. However, one can see the lines of the painting pulsating, producing a kind of fluctuation as we move forward. As you move closer to the microcosm of the work, you can see the most original element: the substances that make up the lines. And this is the realisation of Park’s life. Through this continuous action of creation throughout his life, he integrates his observations of life and existence into his paintings, creating a larger space for us to insert our imaginations.