Park Kwang-Jin : Seeker of Nature

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 world. A founding member of the Mokwoohoe (Figurative Art movement), Park’s signature synthesis of traditional observation and modernist formal language has influenced generations of artists. At age 93, his contemporary practice continues to evolve. The exhibition will be on view at Hunter Dunbar Projects’ Chelsea location from September 17th through October 24th, 2026.

Park Kwang-Jin (b. 1935, Seoul) occupies a singular position within Korea's postwar history, having long been celebrated in Korea as both an artist and a builder of the country’s cultural infrastructure. While his Dansaekhwa peers—Park Seo-Bo, Lee Ufan, Ha Chong-Hyun—pursued monochrome abstraction through material process, Park never abandoned figuration. His work forms what might be termed a "parallel modernism" to dominant Western trajectories: while Western critics declared the "death of painting" in the 1970s and early 1980s, only to see it briefly revived in the Neo-Expressionist ‘80s, Park steadily refined a practice that demonstrated how figuration and abstraction could not only coexist but synthesize. His fidelity to representation was not conservative, but rather a conviction that tradition could be carried forward through transformation. 

In addition to his deeply influential artistic practice, Park is credited with a key role in the formation of cultural infrastructure in Korea and abroad. For nearly 40 years Park taught at leading art schools, shaping generations of younger painters. He chaired the Korean Fine Arts Association and played a decisive role in establishing the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the Gwangju Biennale in 1995. In the early 1980s, he was among the first artists to establish a studio on Jeju Island, and a museum dedicated to his work now stands next to that of his contemporary and longtime friend Park Seo-Bo, underscoring their parallel but divergent trajectories.  

The presentation traces Park's artistic evolution over the course of five decades, from traditional still life and landscape to his breakthrough synthesis of the 1990s to present day. Inspired by an encounter with the work of Jesús Rafael Soto at UNESCO in Paris in 1994, Park began incorporating hand-painted vertical lines into his landscape compositions, condensing fields of reeds and canola into rhythmic abstractions that evoke wind and sound. His Sound of Nature series transformed the silver grass fields of Jeju Island—where he relocated in 2006—into minimal compositions that placed him in dialogue with global tendencies toward perceptual abstraction while remaining deeply rooted in place. 

The earliest work on view, a 1986 landscape, underscores his representational discipline and mastery of traditional Korean aesthetics. The 1990s and 2000s are represented by the striped “landscape abstractions” that defined his mature style, in which hand-painted vertical lines cut across reeds and canola fields like notations of sound or wind. The presentation concludes with a 2025 landscape of dazzling yellow fields, notable for dispensing with lines in favor of direct observation and introducing a new palette and motif in the later stages of his career—a signal of the artist's lifelong commitment to renewal. 

Park Kwang-Jin’s (b. 1935, Seoul) distinguished career has been recognized with Korea's highest cultural honors, including the Silver Crown Order of Cultural Merit (2008), the Red Stripes Order of Service Merit (2000), and the Bogwan Order of Cultural Merit (1998). He has also received the Oh Ji-Ho Art Award and earned several early "Special Selections" at the country's annual National Art Exhibition. From 1965 to 2000, he served as Professor of Art Education at Seoul National University of Education, later receiving the title of Honorary Professor. His institutional leadership included serving as Chair of the Korea Fine Arts Association, Board Member of the Gwangju Biennale, and Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Korea. Internationally, he held the position of Senior Vice President of the International Association of Art (IAA) at UNESCO in Paris and chaired organizing committees for major cultural events including the ARCO Art Fair in Madrid and the Pyeongtaek International Art Festival. 

Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held at SeMA (Seoul Museum of Art), the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art, the Gwangju Museum of Art, and Hongik University Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. The Annex Building of the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art is permanently dedicated to exhibiting and preserving his work, underscoring his significance in Korean art history. His work is held in major public collections including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; SeMA (Seoul Museum of Art); KAIST Art Museum; the Presidential Residence of Cheong Wa Dae, Seoul; Muan Museum of Art; Hongik University, Seoul; Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art; and UNESCO, Paris, among others. 

Today, Park Kwang-Jin continues his painting practice. He lives and works in Seoul and Jeju Island.