Hyun-Sook Song’s works result from the understanding of painting as an act of concentrated meditation that records the artist’s state of mind.
Sprüth Magers is pleased to showcase a solo presentation of Hyun-Sook Song at Frieze Masters in its new section Studio, curated by Sheena Wagstaff. Song’s decades-long practice is characterized by a distinctive style and technique that blends the ancient medium of egg tempera on canvas with deliberate lines and forms that draw on East Asian calligraphy.
The booth presents Song’s most recent body of work in combination with two early paintings, executed in the 1990s, alongside objects from her studio that serve as sources of inspiration.
The booth presents Song’s most recent body of work in combination with two early paintings, executed in the 1990s, alongside objects from her studio that serve as sources of inspiration.
Throughout her oeuvre, the South Korean-born artist features only a few motifs in her mostly large-scale canvases. The majority show a wooden post or branch on a nondescript ground. In some paintings, what appears to be pieces of cloth are tightly bound around the plain object; in others, such as 11 Brushstrokes (2022), the pole is veiled by a diaphanous layer of paint, suggesting exquisitely thin curtains. In the upper-right corner, the wooden pole’s end, which is rendered in a naturalistic manner, peers out from behind the strips of textile, making the most opaque white column of paint its background.
As with most of Song’s works, the painting both indicates and comments on its own conditions. Emphasizing the artist’s economy of gesture and material, the titles name the limited number of brushstrokes needed to complete each work, prompting the viewer to identify each measured line that represents a unique motion.
As with most of Song’s works, the painting both indicates and comments on its own conditions. Emphasizing the artist’s economy of gesture and material, the titles name the limited number of brushstrokes needed to complete each work, prompting the viewer to identify each measured line that represents a unique motion.
For Song, her studio provides a deep sense of home, a space that answers the question “Wo zu Haus” (Where at Home), the title of her 2021 biography written by Jochen Hiltmann. Displayed in a vitrine alongside archival materials are objects that hark back to the artist’s childhood in a South Korean village and preserve the memories and (familial) traditions of a distant place in the past – a notion Song grapples with in her practice.
The materials – a piece of fabric, photocopies, a postcard, pages from books, all of which accumulated over many years – provide a glimpse of the artist’s studio as a place of reflection, invention and endurance. A photograph depicts the long wooden stick, which viewers will recognize from the works. Below it, a handwritten note – usually pinned to the artist’s studio wall – allows insight into her process: “On the day of painting, refrain from talking and be as silent as possible!”
The materials – a piece of fabric, photocopies, a postcard, pages from books, all of which accumulated over many years – provide a glimpse of the artist’s studio as a place of reflection, invention and endurance. A photograph depicts the long wooden stick, which viewers will recognize from the works. Below it, a handwritten note – usually pinned to the artist’s studio wall – allows insight into her process: “On the day of painting, refrain from talking and be as silent as possible!”
The natural silk thread and the silkworm cocoons ordinarily hang in a prominent place in the artist’s studio and are of particular importance. Reeled off the cocoons she collected in Muwol-li, her birthplace in the mountains of Korea’s South Jeolla Province, the silk recalls her grandmother with whom she used to breed the animals while also evoking the vulnerability and resiliency of both the larvae during metamorphosis and of the material itself.
The natural silk thread and the silkworm cocoons ordinarily hang in a prominent place in the artist’s studio and are of particular importance. Reeled off the cocoons she collected in Muwol-li, her birthplace in the mountains of Korea’s South Jeolla Province, the silk recalls her grandmother with whom she used to breed the animals while also evoking the vulnerability and resiliency of both the larvae during metamorphosis and of the material itself.
Song’s presentation permits an intimate experience of the quiet quality of her works, all of which are rich in layered meanings despite their simple subject matter. The product, perhaps, of fading memories of a place and time that no longer exist, they conjure an array of images and associations but ultimately remain elusive. Committed to her medium and material, Song creates works that lay bare the constitutive elements of painting: support, surface, color and process.
Learn more about the works presented at the fair here.