Kwon Young-woo

On view by appointment only at Blum & Poe Tokyo is the late artist Kwon Young-woo’s solo show. This selection of ink works on paper marks Young-Woo’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and his first solo presentation in Japan. The artist is known for his role as one of the founding figures of Dansaekhwa—the Korean monochrome painting movement of the 1970s—and his training in ink-painting traditions. After abandoning the use of ink in the 1960s and scratching the surface of the delicate, multilayered hanji paper with his fingernails instead, he created compositions of rips, utilizing the paper as a tool or a method instead of a canvas. Today, he is known for such works that span over more than 50 years in the field, as he explored the material properties of paper. This presentation specifically features a later tableaux of the artist’s practice—a return to experimenting with ink—and works never previously seen in Japan.