Gana Art

Park Yungnam
Cloud Sonata

Gana Art is pleased to present Cloud Sonata, a solo exhibition by Park Yungnam (b.1949). Park graduated from the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University in 1973 and has since spent five decades forging a singular path within Korean abstract painting. His practice is defined by a distinctive painterly language in which the artist works not with brushes but with his fingers, the body becoming the primary means through which he senses and constructs his pictorial world. The exhibition presents two of his signature black-and-white abstract series — Moonlight Song and Cloud Sonata — offering insight into Park’s sustained exploration of abstraction and the evolution of his recent practice. Park’s works are held in major institutional collections including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Seoul National University Museum of Art, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. 

The exhibition presents a range of recent works, from the Moonlight Song, created in 2017, to the latest Cloud Sonata series, providing a comprehensive view of Park Yungnam’s practice. Moonlight Song expands across the pictorial surface through a strong contrast between deep black and white ground. From the late 1980s, Park introduced the grid as a device for dividing the pictorial surface, going on to develop black-and-white paintings characterized by regular, geometric patterning. The Moonlight Song series marks the point at which this grid begins to dissolve—a transitional body of work moving away from formal division toward all-over abstraction. This shift advances further in the Cloud Sonata works, which form the core of the exhibition, expanding into a black-and-white abstraction that expresses a sense of nature more freely. Free of any compositional division, forms fill the entire canvas, gathering, blurring, and spreading to produce subtle gradations of light and dark. Particles of grey, born between dense black pigment and white ground, accumulate in overlapping layers, evoking the rise of dark clouds or the scattering of light. 

Cloud Sonata is an occasion to witness the depth of Park Yungnam’s artistic world, built over decades, while also encountering his work as it stands today.  He says, “If it looks like something else, it’s good enough.” Given that abstract painting is a genre that does not reproduce specific subjects, this is a paradoxical and intriguing position. For each person who stands before them, his canvases may resolve into shifting clouds or the light of sunrise and sunset. One might find oneself reaching imaginatively for the texture of the surface, or—true to the title ‘Cloud Sonata’—finding that some sound comes to mind. We hope that those who encounter Park’s work will bring their own senses to it and find within it something entirely their own. 

박영남
Cloud Sonata

가나아트는 박영남(Park Yungnam, b.1949)의 개인전 《Cloud Sonata》를 개최한다. 박영남은 1973년 서울대학교 미술대학 서양화과를 졸업한 이후, 현재까지 쉼 없이 작업을 이어오며 한국 추상회화의 독자적인 지평을 열어왔다. 특히 붓이 아닌 손가락으로 캔버스를 채우는 작업 방식은 그의 회화를 특징짓는 고유한 조형 언어 중 하나이다. 이러한 예술적 성취를 바탕으로, 작가의 작품은 국립현대미술관, 서울시립미술관, 경기도미술관, 서울대학교미술관을 비롯해 미국 코넬대학교 미술관 등 국내외 주요 기관에 소장되어 있다.  

이번 개인전에서는 2017년에 제작된 〈Moonlight Song〉부터 전시와 동명의 신작 〈Cloud Sonata〉 연작에 이르는 최근 작업들을 한자리에 선보이며, 박영남의 작업 세계를 폭넓게 조망한다. 〈Moonlight Song〉은 짙은 검정과 흰 바탕의 강한 대비를 기반으로 화면을 확장해 나가는 흑백 추상 회화 연작이다. 박영남은 1980년대 후반부터 화면을 분할하는 그리드(grid)를 도입하여 규칙적이고 기하학적인 패턴의 흑백 회화를 이어왔다. 〈Moonlight Song〉 연작은 그리드가 허물어지기 시작하는 시점의 작업으로, 형식적 구획에서 벗어나 전면 추상으로 나아가는 과도기에 위치한다. 이러한 전환은 전시의 주축을 이루는 최근작 〈Cloud Sonata〉 연작에서 한층 더 진전된 형태로 나타나며, 자연의 감각을 보다 자유롭게 풀어내는 흑백 추상으로 확장된다. 어떠한 구획도 없이 캔버스 전면을 가득 채운 형태는 서로 뭉치고 번지며 농담의 미묘한 변화를 만들어낸다. 농밀한 검정의 안료와 흰 바탕 사이에서 생성된 회색의 입자들은 층층이 중첩되며, 먹구름이 피어오르거나 빛이 산란하는 듯한 장면을 환기한다. 

본 전시는 박영남이 쌓아온 작업 세계의 깊이를 확인하는 동시에, 추상의 영역에서 다양한 시도를 이어 온 그의 현재를 만나는 자리다. 자연의 감각을 손끝으로 더듬어 추상의 언어로 풀어낸 그의 작업은 자연과 함께 변화하며 진화를 거듭한다. 작가는 “무엇처럼 보일 때 그것으로 족하다”고 말한다. 추상 회화가 특정 대상을 재현하지 않는 장르임을 생각하면 이는 역설적이면서도 흥미로운 지점이다. 보는 이에 따라 작가의 화면은 시시각각 변하는 구름의 형태가 되기도, 일출과 일몰의 햇빛이 되기도 한다. 단순히 보는 것을 넘어, 캔버스 표면의 감촉을 상상하고, ‘Cloud Sonata’라는 전시명처럼 어떤 소리를 떠올리게 될지도 모른다. 반세기의 세월을 거쳐 여전히 확장을 거듭하는 박영남의 예술 세계를 이번 전시에서 저마다의 감각으로 온전히 경험하기를 기대한다.