ABOVE: Park Dae Sung painting Mount Geumgang in Winter, 2018, at his studio. BELOW: Park Dae Sung, Magnificent View of Samneung, 2017, ink on paper. Private Collection. Courtesy of Gana Foundation for Arts and Culture

Park Dae Sung, Magnificent View of Samneung, 2017, ink on paper. Private Collection. Image courtesy Gana Foundation for Arts and Culture.

The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College presents Park Dae Sung: Ink Reimagined, a major exhibition of contemporary Korean ink painting including 23 works, many of which are being shown for the first time in the United States.

Park Dae Sung (b. 1945) transforms meditative observation into monumental artworks that revitalize traditional Korean brush and ink techniques for a modern audience. His paintings couple large scale (several works in the show are more than 25 feet long) with technical finesse, reinterpreting ancient landscapes and objects.

This is the largest solo exhibition of Park’s work to be presented in the United States, and only the third time that the artist will have a U.S. solo show. 

“Park Dae Sung’s audacity lies in his ability to fully absorb and embrace traditional East Asian brush and ink painting,” notes John Stomberg, the Hood Museum’s Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director, “while creating artworks of absolute contemporaneity. The paintings are awe inspiring in the truest sense of the phrase.”

Dartmouth Associate Professor of Art History Sunglim Kim, curator of the exhibition, adds, “[Ink Reimagined] is a great opportunity for the Dartmouth and Upper Valley communities to meet this world-class artist in person and see his magnificent works first hand. Park is very humble and deliberate in personality yet passionate and exuberant when engaged with painting. Visitors will see two contrasting characters in his sensitive bird and still life works; long handscroll calligraphy; and bold, energetic, and gigantic landscapes.”

“We hope the exhibition will deepen Western understanding of Park’s modern style and inspire interest in the long tradition of East Asian ink painting, as well as contemporary Korean art and culture,” Kim adds.

Featuring works that rethink landscape, still life, modernity, and tradition, Ink Reimagined captures the essence of Park Dae Sung’s practice. It is organized into four sections: Landscapes, Birds and Animals, Still Life, and Calligraphy. It inspires a deeper contemplation of traditional East Asian art and the diversity of styles — meditative, dramatic, tranquil, and powerful — that exist in the medium of ink.

Viewers will walk away from Park’s work with a newfound understanding of what it means to find beauty in what is old, and with a fresh perspective upon humanity’s contemporary relationships with nature, identity, and homeland. His scenes present an imaginative reinterpretation of history that in turn encourages a more progressive and stirring vision of the future.

Park Dae Sung: Ink Reimagined is on view from Sept. 24 through March 19, 2023 at The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

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