White Cube New York will present the final series of work created by the late Korean artist Park Seo-Bo, before his passing in 2023. Entitled The Newspaper Écritures, 2022–23, Park’s final studies involved painting repetitive gestures with oil directly on global newspapers, each selected to signify an important date from his life — wedding anniversaries and family birthdays to major events that he noted on the back of the canvas.
Park’s Écriture series stems back to the 1960s, as the artist began fusing Korean calligraphy with principles native to Taoist and Buddhist philosophy. The repetitive mark-making has no intrinsic narrative and is meant to reflect the state of mind the artist was in — Écriture translating to “writing” in French. “Like the Korean scholars and Buddhist monks who saw writing as a purifying process, Park Seo-Bo saw painting and the repetitive gesture from which his monochromes emerged as a catharsis,” Perrotin previously wrote upon the artist’s passing.
Pharrell Williams was one of the many people recently inspired by Park’s work, working alongside the artist’s grandson, fashion designer Jifan Park and the PARKSEOBO FOUNDATION, to create a collection of leather goods and ready-to-wear garments as part of a small collaborative capsule for Louis Vuitton.
The Newspaper Écritures, 2022–23 will comprise of 52 meditative paintings and will go on view in New York from November 7 to January 11, 2025.
White Cube
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