Installation view of 《Chromatic Verticals – Line of Flight》 ©Savina Museum of Contemporary Art
Savina
Museum of Contemporary Art presents a solo exhibition 《Chromatic
Verticals – Line of Flight》 by artist Kwon Ki Soo, on
view through December 31.
This
exhibition is an experimental project that reinterprets bamboo—an enduring
symbol in traditional East Asian painting—and the five cardinal colors
(obangsaek) through a contemporary lens, combining digital-era chromatics,
structural approaches, and participatory installation concepts. The artist
overturns the conventions of traditional ink bamboo painting, which has long
relied on brushwork executed in a single, fluid stroke, and introduces a new
concept: bamboo made of color, or “Chromatic Verticals (色竹).”
Installation view of 《Chromatic Verticals – Line of Flight》 ©Savina Museum of Contemporary Art
In this project, bamboo is no longer
treated as a subject of flat ink painting, but is instead reborn as a
three-dimensional, color-field structure. This transformation goes beyond a
formal variation; it reexamines the inherent spirituality and structural logic
of tradition while expanding the temporality and spatiality of painting into a
contemporary dimension.
Starting from the philosophy of the five
cardinal colors (obangsaek), the artist hand-combines more than 500 hues,
constructed through a process that merges digital underdrawings with the
tactile sensitivity of manual work. This method represents a bold aesthetic
experiment that both dismantles and inherits the spiritual lineage of East
Asian painting.
In this process, the traditional
brushstroke—once central to literati painting and defined by the principle of
ilpilhwiji (one stroke, one breath)—is deconstructed. It is replaced by a
color-field design characterized by modularity and precision, qualities
inherent to digital visual language. The expressive movement of the brush is
transformed into a symbolic structure, allowing traditional painting to evolve
into a new visual language suited for the digital age.
Installation view of 《Chromatic Verticals – Line of Flight》 ©Savina Museum of Contemporary Art
The Chromatic Verticals project expands the
philosophy and aesthetics of traditional painting into an artistic language
that can be reconfigured for the age of artificial intelligence. By
transforming the black-and-white spirit of ink painting into color and
structure, and combining it with digital design systems, East Asian painting is
demonstrated to remain a living and vital art form.
Thus, 《Chromatic
Verticals – Line of Flight》 is a complex visual
experiment where tradition and modernity, emotion and sign, flatness and space,
ink and digital media, humanity and machinic logic, participation and
contemplation intersect. This exhibition proposes a new horizon for
21st-century Korean art by extending the concept of painting across the
dimensions of color and structure, space and perception, participation and
philosophy.
