Park Kwang-Jin

Park Kwang-Jin (b. 1935, Seoul) holds a singular place in Korea’s postwar art history. A founding member of the Mokwoohoe (Figurative Art movement), he developed a practice that fused close observation with modernist form. While many of his Dansaekhwa contemporaries pursued monochrome abstraction through material process, Park sustained a commitment to figuration, forging what might be called a “parallel modernism” in which representation and abstraction coexist. His approach treated tradition not as something to preserve unchanged, but as something to transform. This is especially evident in his Sound of Nature series, where the silver grass fields of Jeju Island—his home since 2006—are distilled into spare, perceptual compositions that connect global abstraction with a strong sense of place.

A graduate of the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University, Park co-founded the Mokwoohoe in 1957 and has remained active in the Korean art scene for over seven decades. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at UNESCO Headquarters. Alongside his studio practice, he has played a major role in art education as a professor emeritus at Seoul National University of Education and a former chairperson of the Korean Fine Arts Association. His recent recognition includes the major exhibition Park Kwang Jin: Whispers of Nature at the Seoul Museum of Art (2024–2025).

Park Kwang-Jin

Seeker of Nature

17 Sep - 24 Oct 2026

The first major U.S. solo exhibition of Park Kwang-Jin’s work opens at Hunter Dunbar Projects this September, bringing together a significant selection of landscape paintings by one of Korea’s foremost postwar painters. Seeker of Nature spans more than 40 years of Park’s career, tracing his sustained engagement with the natural...

Minimal-Maximal

6 Nov 2025 - 30 Mar 2026

Hunter Dunbar Projects is pleased to announce Minimal-Maximal , a group exhibition juxtaposing distinct modes of abstraction. The presentation will be on view at Hunter Dunbar Projects in Chelsea from November 6th, 2025 to January 17th, 2026. Minimalism emerged initially in the 1960s, foregrounding an artwork’s formal elements – line,...

East - West

1 May - 7 Jun 2025

Hunter Dunbar Projects is pleased to announce East West , a group exhibition bringing together a group of renowned artists from Asia and the Americas, whose reductionist works find common ground in the minimal and, in some cases, the repetitive. In East West , the dialogues created between the works...

Park Kwang-Jin: Listening to the Landscape

In his first major U.S. solo presentation, the Korean master brings more than four decades of looking, listening, and transforming nature into painting to New York.

September 22, 2026

Read Erica Silverman’s article on Park Kwang-Jin: Seeker of Nature for Whitewall, exploring the artist’s enduring relationship with the natural world and the evolution of...