For a short few weeks in early 2023, one could discover the atemporal beauty of the art of Yun Hyong-Keun at David Zwirner’s Parisian space. The selection of works for this exhibition included Yun’s paintings on canvas as well as works on hanji—traditional Korean mulberry paper—realized in the immediate years surrounding the artist’s stay in Paris from 1980 to 1982. Shown together, these two important bodies of work shed light on Yun’s positioning vis-a-vis his singular stance within Dansaekhwa, the modernist painting movement that dominated the discourse in Korean art of the 1970s and 1980s.
The rapid rise of Dansaekhwa in the market over the last ten years has offered viewers many opportunities to gain deeper and more subtle understandings of the individual practices of Korean artists associated with this movement. Among these distinctive figures,
