Overview

Artist’s Statement

After more than three decades, I have returned to Haenam.

Since leaving Korea for France, I spent many years working between Paris and various parts of Europe. Later, through an artist residency that brought me back to Korea, I found myself naturally returning to my hometown. There, I encountered something I had long forgotten, yet had never truly left behind: Uldolmok.

Uldolmok is not simply a landscape. It is a place where opposing currents collide, generating an immense and palpable force—a site where the power of nature reveals itself with extraordinary intensity. As I watched the currents, memories of my childhood resurfaced. At the same time, I came to recognize that the source of what I had been pursuing in my painting for so many years was somehow already present in that place.

From that moment, my work began to change.

I no longer seek to reproduce or describe nature. Instead, I try to reveal on the canvas the flows, rhythms, and invisible forces that exist within it. Water, wind, earth, and objects do not exist independently; they are constantly connected, permeating one another and generating an ongoing movement. The concept I refer to as “Gyeol” (結) emerges from the traces of these relationships—the interconnected grain, rhythm, and flow through which things reveal their presence.

My paintings are created through the repeated application of extremely delicate brushstrokes, gradually building layer upon layer. Yet this process is not about creating physical thickness. Rather, it is a way of inscribing time, breath, and bodily movement onto the surface of the work. Through repetition, each brushstroke gradually becomes rhythm, and the canvas ceases to be merely a space that contains form. It becomes a place where energy resides.

In East Asian aesthetics, there is a concept known as Gihun Saengdong (氣韻生動)—the vitality and rhythmic resonance that animate a work from within. I have been deeply interested in this idea for many years. Gihun Saengdong is not simply a sense of liveliness or movement. It refers to a state in which an invisible force moves through and animates what we see. What I seek to paint, therefore, is not the external appearance of an object, but the traces of the energy moving within it.

Recently, I have begun to extend these questions through new forms of media.

In this exhibition, I present works incorporating AI-generated moving images. I regard AI not simply as a technology, but as a new kind of brush. If painting captures the movement of energy within a still image, AI-generated moving images extend that movement into the dimension of time. Although the two media are fundamentally different, they ultimately lead toward the same questions:

How are we connected to nature?

And how can invisible energy become an image?

This exhibition is a continuation of the questions that began at Uldolmok—questions that move through painting and AI before returning, ultimately, to the human being.

I hope that viewers will experience this exhibition not simply as a representation of a landscape, but as an encounter with the deeper resonance created by water and wind, time and memory. I also hope that Korean culture may be understood not merely through its external forms and recognizable images, but through the deeper rhythms, energies, and sensibilities that flow beneath them.

The currents of Uldolmok continue to flow.

And my paintings, too, continue to emerge within that flow.

Biography

HAN Hongsu (b. 1959, Haenam, Korea) is a Korean contemporary artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores the fundamental relationships between color, materiality, nature, time, and human existence. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and moving image, Han has developed a distinctive visual language centered on the philosophical and material possibilities of color.

Born in Haenam, a coastal region in southwestern Korea, Han’s artistic perspective has been profoundly shaped by the landscape, currents, light, and natural rhythms of the region. His long-standing engagement with Uldolmok, one of Korea’s most powerful tidal straits, has led him to contemplate movement, resistance, transformation, and the passage of time. These ideas have become central to his artistic vocabulary.

A key concept in HAN’s practice is “Gyeol” (결)—a Korean term referring to the grain, texture, flow, or inherent rhythm within a material or living entity. Through layered surfaces, repeated gestures, subtle variations of color, and material processes, Han seeks to reveal the internal structure and invisible energy of things rather than simply depicting their external appearance.

HAN received his degree from Mokpo National University in 1986. He subsequently studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Versailles in France from 1993 to 1994, followed by advanced studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany from 1996 to 1998. His education in Korea, France, and Germany contributed to a broad artistic perspective that bridges Eastern philosophical thought with European modern and contemporary art practices.

Throughout his career, Han has continuously expanded his exploration of color and material. His recent practice also incorporates AI-generated moving images and digital media, creating a dialogue between traditional material processes and emerging technologies. Rather than approaching technology as an end in itself, he uses it as a means to reconsider perception, memory, reality, and the nature of the image.

HAN’s artistic practice can be understood as an ongoing inquiry into the ontology of color—the possibility that color may exist not merely as a visual phenomenon, but as a form of presence capable of carrying memory, emotion, time, and philosophical meaning.

His recent projects include “Uldolmok, Origin of Gyeol” (2026), presented at the Haenam Cultural Arts Center, and the publication project “Ontology of Color,” which documents his sustained investigation into color, materiality, nature, and philosophical inquiry.

Through a practice developed over several decades, HAN Hongsu continues to examine the relationship between the visible and invisible, the physical and metaphysical, and the individual and the natural world.

Works