PARK SEO-BO: THE NEWSPAPER ECRITURES, 2022–23

White Cube is pleased to present ‘The Newspaper Ecritures, 2022–23’, an exhibition showcasing the final body of work by the late master of Dansaekhwa, Park Seo-Bo.

November 8, 2024 – January 11, 2025

Completed shortly before his passing in 2023 at the age of 91, the works in this exhibition stand as a culmination of the artist’s lifelong creative practice – one profoundly influenced by Daoist and Buddhist philosophies and driven by the radical pursuit of emptiness. Interspersed with ‘Black and White Ecriture’ paintings from the 1990s, the exhibition highlights Park’s formal and ideological concerns across the two bodies of work, as well as his artistic innovations in the medium of paper.

Characterised by iterative gestural repetition, and executed on archival, pre-colour newspapers, the ‘Newspaper Ecriture’ series developed through varied applications of white oil paint into which Park inscribed his pencil markings while the paint remained wet. Standing as a profound statement on the act of creation and the temporal fact of their making, they are, above all, diaristic paintings – records of the artist’s gestures, attuned to the immediacy of the drying paint.

Though the ‘Newspaper Ecriture’ works exhibited were created nearly 50 years after this revelation, Park’s decision to return to the idea imparts intention to the snowy, itinerant strokes and drifting speckles of paint gracing the page. Accruing persistently like static, these painted marks interfere with the noise of the printed bulletins and advertisements beneath. Certain elements remain visible: the mastheads, for example, appear across several of the works, referencing his very first prototypes on Le Monde newsprint. The bold typefaces of the periodicals announce their origins – The Chosun Ilbo, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Petit Provençal– all of them old pre-colour editions from the 1930s to the 1980s, which the artist sourced specifically for their monochrome ground.

Produced in the winter of his life, as his health waned, the ‘Newspaper Ecriture’ works give complete form to the virtues of mental stamina, strength and fortitude that Park sought to cultivate.