Youn Myeungro
Korea
Youn Myeungro (b. 1936) is a respected elder in the Korean art community who brought new change to the history of Korean modern art when he formed the Korean Association of Artists in 1960. His early series, which began in the 1960s, were characterized by matière created with thick layers of paint, under the influence of Art Informel. This was a long-lasting characteristic of his work. Subsequently, he applied the crack technique, using the cracks that formed on thick layers of paint, thereby giving peculiar formativeness and a sense of dimension to atypical picture-planes, and revealed traces of movement on his canvases through the act of repeating labor-intensive brush strokes. Furthermore, he attempted to seek harmony between different media by using acrylics and traditional ink together in the same work. As revealed in his comment, “I paint between Cezanne and Gyeomjae,” Youn wants to position his work on the contact point between East and West. By exploring the materiality of paint and the act of painting over a long period of time, and attempting to graft past and present, and East and West, Youn Myeungro has presented an expanded world of painting.