“Simultaneity” (1988) displays quadrangular forms, which are the main elements of Suh’s art, an infinite but flat background, and the combination of the colors that fill the two. On one side of the dark and bluish background, which simultaneously displays plane and infinity, are placed a few overlapping quadrangular planes without division of front and back. In terms of time, “simultaneity” means coexisting at the moment―not the past, present, or future―without order. Likewise, “simultaneity” in this work refers to the unity and harmonious sharing of space among the quadrilaterals on the canvas, the painting’s space as the background, and the colors filling the two.
Seung Won Suh (b. 1941) received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Department of Painting at Hongik University. From 1962 to 1964, he won multiple Special Selection Awards at Shinsangheo, New Form Association Competition Exhibition held at National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, currently MMCA, and he was also awarded the Grand Prize at Korean Fine Art Grand Prize Exhibition in 1978. He held thirteen solo exhibitions and participated in over 200 group exhibitions at home and abroad, including Seoul, Tokyo, Germany, and Italy. Suh served on the faculty in the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University where he is currently a professor emeritus.
Seung Won Suh’s art highlights one of the most important periods in Korean modernist art. In 1962, when the Korean art scene was dominated by Art Informel, Suh founded an artist group called Origin that first established geometrism in the Korean art circle, and played a pivotal role in leading the second generation of Korean abstract art, or geometric abstraction. Also, he participated in the founding process of the Korean Avant-garde Association, AG in 1970 out of his desire to seek new forms of art, and further tried to establish a new set of visual language free from the conventional style. His endeavor to escape from Informel style can be characterized by geometrical patterns and simultaneity, both of which are observable from his early days to the present. Simultaneity in his painting refers to coexistence of form, color, and the space as equal elements, not hierarchical existence in which one is subordinate to the other. From the 1990s, his work began to be transformed into a warmer world of abstraction, as art critic Lee Yil put it, “a transition from an intellectual world to a realm of sensibility with human warmth.” This is deemed the middle-aged painter’s intention to take a step further from the simultaneity that he established in his younger days in the hopes of deriving sentimental simultaneity from the relationship between his work and the viewer.
