Conceived as a collaboration between cync and Almine Rech, Forming the Monochrome: Masters of Dansaekhwa commemorates the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Korea, established in 1886. The exhibition surveys the historical significance and aesthetic depth of Dansaekhwa, a major movement in Korean contemporary art, through the work of its leading artists.
The exhibition brings together key figures of Dansaekhwa, including Ha Chong-Hyun, Lee Ufan, Park Seo-Bo, Yun Hyong-keun, and Chung Sang-Hwa. Emerging during the transitional period of Korean abstraction in the 1960s and 1970s, these artists did not simply adopt Western formal languages. Instead, they developed distinct painterly approaches grounded in a fundamental inquiry into material and gesture.
Dansaekhwa cannot be reduced to a formal tendency toward monochrome surfaces. The pictorial field is formed through the accumulation of repeated actions, in which processes of pushing, dragging, and permeation register layers of time and traces of the body. This performative mode of making privileges process over result, moving toward a condition that exceeds intention and control, and approaches a state akin to non-action. In this way, Dansaekhwa extends beyond representation and expression, establishing a painterly field where action and thought converge.
While visually resonant with Western monochrome painting, Dansaekhwa reveals clear distinctions in its conceptual grounding and artistic attitude. Rooted in Korea’s historical experience and East Asian modes of thought, it resists being confined to a specific cultural framework. Through repetition, restraint, balance, and emptiness, it evokes a more fundamental sensibility toward interiority and time, expanding into a broader and more universal perceptual dimension.
The presentation of Dansaekhwa in Paris, a central site of European modern and contemporary art, forms a significant context for this exhibition. In a city shaped by the convergence of diverse aesthetic traditions, Dansaekhwa enters into dialogue with contemporary sensibilities and opens new possibilities for interpretation. This context underscores that Dansaekhwa is not limited to a regional art history, but constitutes a mode of thinking that remains relevant within a broader cultural horizon.
This exhibition revisits the formation and development of Dansaekhwa through the work of its leading artists, while also functioning as a platform to raise aesthetic questions that remain pertinent today. The accumulated traces of time and gesture embedded within restrained surfaces invite viewers to reconsider the fundamental conditions of painting.
