Korean contemporary landscape paintings in Hong Kong show have Chinese echoes

“Contemporary Sansuhwa”, curated by Miki Wick-Kim, features the works of three Korean artists who follow the landscape painting tradition, and it is interesting to compare their works with those of contemporary Chinese artists following the Shanshui tradition.

Of the three, Moon Beom’s works are the most abstract. His mountains – if they are mountains - are not references to real places but are part of his visual vocabulary. Each of the three works on show in Hong Kong are dreamlike landscapes populated by faintly familiar fragments that could be foliage, clouds or rocks.

He first applied black oil sticks to a pastel background, and then put on cotton gloves and used his fingers to manipulate the dark pigments into shapes.

“I think it’s great that the show is in Hong Kong because Chinese and Koreans have a shared language,” says Wick-Kim.

The landscape tradition is understood here and there’s a commonality based on Eastern philosophies, she adds.

Moon borrows generic motifs to reflect on the age-old yearning for harmony with nature, much like Chinese artists such as Yang Yongliang, who hides building cranes among his rolling ink mountains, and Hong Kong’s Koon Wai-bong with his visualisations of a quiet state of mind.