Flare for Korean-style Painting

Painter Cho depicts his love of mountains in semi-abstract artwork

Painter Cho Kyu-han is known for his flare for Korean-style painting. He uses hemp clothes with Korean papers attached, ink and acrylic for his inimitable Korean-style paintings. He draws artistic themes from comic books he used to read when he was a child, rather than from the memories of his youthful dreams in his hometown and put them into geometric forms to make up the frames for his paintings.
He said his art work are semi-abstract with themes made of his memories of childhood, festivities, serenades, echo, diary, and songs he heard during his youthful days in his hometown. He relies on memories which are transformed by artists'identities over so many years. His art is focused on attempts to draw out esthetic beauty in the process of dissolving inflexible criticism through the art medium. Beauty in paintings can be observed from their external forms, but not the beauty delivered through paintings unless closely examining the thoughts and their flows.
He said he often visits mountains to make art themes out of the inspirations and feelings he gets from mountains and express them in his art pieces. He started to go to mountains when he graduated from high school in 1973 and he visited Mt. Chiri with his senior class. Transportation was inconvenient and roads were rough then. He drew sketches of mountains and took photos of those hills as he was an Oriental-style painter.
Mountains, waters, clouds, sounds of streams, sounds of winds, sounds of drums, sounds of scenery, sounds of bells, and others to name just a few get mixed with shamanism's colorful language and expressed in the painter's semi-abstract work. This is the process of the recreation of real pictures of the feelings provided by mountains and Zen Buddhism and asceticism and the spiritual poles broken apart.
Mountains are quite teachers of humiliation to mankind; they are the formative art products created by the god of nature and the universe. Human beings live inside them with healthy body and mind, holding dialogue with silence and empty their minds. The painter swears that he will keep calling on mountains to think about new ideas for his work and struggle with his life full of repeated pains and pleasures.Cho is a graduate of Daegu University Fine Arts College majoring in Korean-style painting. He held many solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions during his career including the Korean-style Painting Invitational Exhibition in Gwangju Culture and Arts Hall in 2000,
altogether some 250 different occasions both at home and overseas. He held invitational exhibition at Cast Iron Gallery in New York in 1994. nw

Painter Cho Kyu-han

Echo; 112 x 145 cm; Hemp Cloth + Water Color on Korean Paper; Acrylic Powder; 1982

Echo; 110 x 110 cm; Hemp Cloth + Water Color on Korean Paper; Acrylic Powder; 1994

Echo; 150 x 150 cm; Hemp Cloth + Water Color on Korean Paper; Acrylic Powder; 1994