Ha Chong-Hyun

Image: Ha Chong-Hyun, Conjunction 20-118, 2020, Oil on hempcloth, 130 x 97 x 5.5 cm; © Ha Chong-Hyun.

This autumn in London, Lisson is honoured to present an exhibition of one of the world’s foremost abstract painters, Ha Chong-Hyun, surveying his experimentation and mastery over the past six decades of pioneering work. Based in Seoul, Ha (born in 1935) has gained international recognition for combining elements of monochromatic, minimalist and gestural abstraction with conceptual, performative and material aspects of painting.

The Korean artist’s inaugural show with the gallery and his first in London since 2020 amounts to a wide-ranging yet succinct survey of his practice from his earliest works up to the present day. The display begins with a geometric composition featuring woven, painted strips from the early Naissance series and an equally colourful folded and rippled canvas, both dating to the late 1960s. Further pushing the possibilities of material and action within the field of painting, Ha began burning his impasto surfaces and adding coiled springs or barbed wire to works made in the 1970s, when he became associated with the Dansaekwha movement. Around this time, he alighted on his signature method of pushing paint through the reverse of coarse hemp canvas, literally turning the painting process inside out. This innovation, for the Conjunction series, continues to this day, with an array of different textures, gestures, tones and techniques differentiating each of these distillations of form, pressure and mark-making. Ha’s career reflects a sustained commitment to experimentation that has significantly shaped broader discussions of postwar abstraction