![\"older](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Ha-Chong-Hyun-in-his-studio.-Photo-by-Chunho-An_2000-ad8f7204.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHa Chong-Hyun\u2019s retrospective luxuriates in thick applications of paint.<\/p>\n
Oct 19, 2026<\/p>\n
Updated 2:41 pm PT<\/p>\n
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Ha Chong-Hyun in his studio.\u00a0(Chunho An)<\/p>\n
Ha Chong-Hyun: Retrospective<\/a> doesn\u2019t need a more exciting title because the exhibition is drop dead gorgeous. Though he\u2019s called \u201cthe father of Korean modernism,\u201d Ha isn\u2019t yet a household name in the U.S. Nevertheless, the Asian Art Museum<\/a> clearly trusts the paintings themselves to entice people to visit this show. But there\u2019s a surprise among the stunning aesthetic beauty. While Ha\u2019s work supports an art-for-art\u2019s-sake appreciation, it quickly becomes apparent that Ha\u2019s paintings are witnesses to and documents of the tumultuous, consequential history of Korea over the country\u2019s dizzying changes during the 20th and 21st centuries.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re kind of ice cream,\u201d Asian Art Museum director Soyoung Lee told KQED of the paintings. \u201cI feel like I can almost taste it. I feel like I can smell it. I feel like I want to touch it even though I have to be careful about saying that when I work in a museum!\u201d<\/p>\n Ha\u2019s sensual blobs, blots and gestures instilled longing in me too \u2014 the kind of desire a 5 year old has for the entire contents of the ice cream case at the shop. I didn\u2019t only want to touch the paint, I wanted to lick it too.<\/p>\n Ha was born in 1935, in a Korea that was a colony of Japan. By the time Ha reached adulthood in the mid-20th century, Korea had experienced 35 years of Japanese rule, the U.S. and Soviet Union partitioning the country into two occupation zones, the Korean War and a devastated economy. The only material he could find for painting was the burlap of U.S. grain shipments and army sandbags.<\/p>\n Early works in the galleries show Ha reaching for whatever materials were available: burlap and hemp, metal springs, even barbed wire. Like arte povera, the post-WWII Italian art movement characterized by cheap materials, Ha\u2019s work speaks to the historical reality of pre-urbanized Korea. Though their formal characteristics are interesting on a purely visual level, Lee notes that the materials carry unmissable connotations. Barbed wire, for instance, also marks the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea.<\/p>\n In this retrospective, Ha\u2019s back-pressure method paintings start out relatively quiet in the 1970s quietly. Rows of white paint circles push through the loose burlap weave in Conjunction 74-26. The oil in the paint, absorbed into the burlap around it, creates halo-like stains around the white paint. I started to think about Korea\u2019s push towards modernity; the irrepressible drive towards a developed economy, the uncontrolled drips flowing like the unexpected human consequences of those huge social changes.<\/p>\n Ever experimenting, Ha began filling nearly the whole surface of his large works with paint and working with the pigment both on the back as well as the front sides of the support in the 1980s. In the \u201990s, Ha incorporated color with brilliant effects. By the 2010s, Ha started to tamp thin wooden boards onto a bed of paint that then spurted through the slats, as in Post-Conjunction 10\u20132. There\u2019s even one slat painting that uses mirrors instead of wooden boards, allowing visitors to see their reflection spliced among the paint splatters.<\/p>\n The magnificent 2020s paintings \u2014 91-year-old Ha is still very much active \u2014 take one\u2019s breath away. The glistening paint appears still wet, alive on the hemp surfaces. A new freedom with color adds a detailed level of variety within each paint mark.<\/p>\n \u201cHis art definitely speaks to what it means for things to go through human hands,\u201d said Lee. \u201cIt\u2019s something that requires a little commitment from you \u2026 to slow down to look and think about what it is to make things with your hands, with your body \u2014 and to feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ha\u2019s paintings, irrepressibly visceral, do seem like an antidote to the disembodiment of San Francisco\u2019s AI era. A display of Ha\u2019s many paint-encrusted tools near the exhibition entrance and accompanying videos of him at work hammer home how bodily the artist\u2019s practice is. Indeed, Ha has always called himself a \u201claborer,\u201d which both speaks to the physicality of his art and his origins as the middle child of a large farming family. I left Ha Chong-Hyun with the thought that instead of going to touch grass, I could pick up some paint at the art store and give them a squeeze through my fingers.<\/p>\n![\"close-up](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/54_Detail-of-Conjunction-22-121-2022-by-Ha-Chong-Hyun.-Oil-on-hemp-cloth.-Courtesy-of-the-artist.-Ph.jpeg\")
Detail of Ha Chong-Hyun\u2019s \u2018Conjunction 22-121,\u2019 2022; Oil on hemp cloth.\u00a0(Courtesy of the artist; photo by Chunho An)<\/p>\n![\"grid](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/19_Work-73-1973-by-Ha-Chong-Hyun.-Barbed-wire-on-panel.-Courtesy-of-the-artist.-Photo-by-An-Chunho_2.jpeg\")
Ha Chong-Hyun, \u2018Work 73,\u2019 1973; Barbed wire on panel.\u00a0(Courtesy of the artist; photo by Chunho An)<\/p>\n![\"wide](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/22_Conjunction-74-26-1974-by-Ha-Chong-Hyun.-Collection-of-Museum-of-Modern-Art-photo-by-Jonathan-Muz.jpeg\")
Ha Chong-Hyun, \u2018Conjunction 74-26,\u2019 1974.\u00a0(Jonathan Muzikar)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/59_Conjunction-26-14-2026-by-Ha-Chong-Hyun.-Oil-on-hemp-cloth.-Courtesy-of-the-artist.-Photo-by-An-C.jpeg\")
Ha Chong-Hyun, \u2018Conjunction 26-14,\u2019 2026; Oil on hemp cloth.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/37_Detail-of-Post-Conjunction-10-2-2010-by-Ha-Chong-Hyun.-Oil-and-collage-on-caanvas.-Courtesy-of-th.jpeg\")
Ha Chong-Hyun, Detail of \u2018Post-Conjunction 10-2,\u2019 2010; Oil and collage on canvas.<\/p>\n