[Gallery Walk] There Are No Paths in Yoo Youngkuk's Mountains

Seoul Museum of Art Presents "Yu Youngkuk: The Mountain Exists Within Me"
The Density of Korean Abstraction Through 178 Works
An Inner Order Built with Primary Colors and Geometry

Beneath the black ceiling, a red mountain stood quietly, its edges sharpened. This was the exhibition hall on the first floor of the Seosomun main building at the Seoul Museum of Art. After the press conference on the 18th, visitors’ steps became noticeably slower during the exhibition tour. Even before hearing the explanations, the works on display were already speaking volumes. A single triangle became a peak, a slanted plane became a ridge, and the red and blue were not the colors of a landscape, but the hues of time densely compressed over the years.

'Yu Youngguk: The Mountain Is Within Me' Part 5, Jeong-gyeong, Photo by Sangtae Kim_Seoul Museum of Art.

There are no paths in the mountains of Yoo Youngkuk. There are no trails, no trees, no people. The name of the mountain remains, but the nature in front of our eyes has been erased. Instead, lines and planes, colors and boundaries, balance and collision remain on the canvas. This is the first key to understanding this exhibition. Yoo Youngkuk was less a painter who depicted mountains, and more an artist who used mountains as a motif to test the limits of how solid painting could become.

Starting May 19, the Seoul Museum of Art is holding a retrospective titled "Yu Youngkuk: The Mountain Exists Within Me" to mark the 110th anniversary of Yoo Youngkuk’s birth. It is the inaugural exhibition in the museum’s new "Korean Modern Masters" series. A total of 178 works are on display, including 115 oil paintings, 12 drawings, 4 reliefs, 8 photographs, and various archival materials, according to detailed criteria. Fifteen previously unreleased works are also included.

The exhibition does not follow a straightforward chronological order. It does not begin in Uljin in 1916 or Tokyo in 1935. Instead, it starts in 1964—the year Yoo Youngkuk, at age 49, held his first solo exhibition. This was the moment when the artist, who had been at the forefront of Korean abstract art through groups such as the New Realist Group, the Modern Art Association, Contemporary Artists’ Invitational Exhibition, and Sinsanghoe, stepped away from collective activities and turned toward his own artistic journey.

Youngkuk Yoo, Work, 1968, Oil on canvas, 136×136cm. Youngkuk Yoo Foundation for Art and Culture.

This choice causes the exhibition to fold back on itself. Beginning with his 1964 solo show, it travels back to his avant-garde experiments at Bunka Gakuin in Tokyo during the 1930s, and then moves forward again to the geometric abstraction of the 1960s and 1970s and the lyrical abstraction of his later years. Rather than organizing his life sequentially, the exhibition traces why he ultimately entered the mountain within himself.

The atmosphere in the early section is low and dark. The walls are lined with small drawings, photographs, and reliefs, while archival materials are arranged at the center of the gallery. Here, Yoo Youngkuk is not yet the "painter of mountains." He is someone experimenting with forms, moving between painting, relief, and photography, focusing more on structure than on surface appearance. The mountain was never a predetermined destination; it was the most precise name for the formal experiments he pursued for so long.

Entering the brighter galleries, the temperature of the paintings changes. Red areas warm the canvas, while blue areas hold back the heat. Yellow and green push against each other, creating tension at the center of the composition. Yoo Youngkuk’s use of color is not decorative. It does not spread prettily, nor does it drift into sentimentality. Color creates boundaries, and those boundaries become the body of the mountain. The primary colors are intense, but the composition is strict. The geometry is cold, yet it is strangely vital. This contradiction is the power of Yoo Youngkuk’s painting.

During his study abroad period in Japan, Yoo Youngkuk, late 1930s to early 1940s, Yoo Youngkuk Art and Culture Foundation.

His mountains originated in the mountains and sea of his hometown, Uljin. However, he did not simply reproduce the landscape of Uljin. The peaks became triangles, the sea became horizontal planes, and the sunset and light were transformed into the pressure of color. Nature was not erased, but rather compressed into a more solid form. The less he painted to resemble reality, the deeper his work reached. Yoo Youngkuk’s abstraction stands upon this paradox.

At the press conference, Yoo Jin, president of the Yoo Youngkuk Art and Culture Foundation, explained that the "mountain" in the exhibition’s title refers not to a visible mountain, but to one projected within the mind. This interpretation gains strength in the latter part of the exhibition. After undergoing surgery to implant a pacemaker in 1977, Yoo Youngkuk had to endure several major surgeries and repeated hospitalizations. Nonetheless, his late works do not incline toward traces of illness. Instead, the colors become softer, the mountains gentler, and the depth of the compositions grows.

The easel and chair from his studio, displayed in the later section, form a small but powerful scene. Daily life comes before the myth of the master. For Yoo Youngkuk, painting was not an explosion of special inspiration, but the routine of sitting in front of the canvas at the same time every day.

'Yoo Youngkuk: The Mountain Is Within Me' Part 2 exterior, Photo by Sangtae Kim_Seoul Museum of Art.

He was an artist whose works only began to sell when he was 59, and even after his surgeries, he never abandoned the rhythm of his studio. This fact does not make his painting more tragic. On the contrary, it makes it more restrained and solid. The mountain was not a subject for inspiration, but the result of repeated labor.

By the end of the exhibition, the mountain is no longer nature, nor geometry, nor memory. The works "Mountain–Red" and "Mountain–Blue" from 1994 face each other like barriers of different colors. The red mountain and the blue mountain are not two aspects of a landscape, but the two poles of the world Yoo Youngkuk wrestled with throughout his life. Fire and water, tension and silence, density and emptiness all collide within a single canvas. Here, the mountain becomes not an external object, but an order established within.

Although this show is a retrospective, it does not stop at commemorating the past. There are also audio guides featuring pianist Son Yeol-eum and broadcaster Peter Hint, and in September, the Seoul Light collaboration will project Yoo Youngkuk’s colors onto the exterior of the DDP. However, at the heart of this exhibition is painting itself. In an age when technology can create and erase images in an instant, Yoo Youngkuk’s canvases show the depth achieved when one person persistently pursues the same form over a long period of time.

Work 1992, first unveiled at this exhibition. Yoo Youngkuk Art Foundation.

The mountain was never outside. Yoo Youngkuk brought it into the canvas and transformed it once again into an inner order. Thus, what viewers encounter in this exhibition is not a landscape of mountains. Instead, it is the life, form, and stubbornness of an artist who left behind only the name "mountain." There are no paths in this mountain. Instead, there are surfaces that open only after long contemplation. The exhibition runs until October 25.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.