“Face”(1980) represents one of the subjects that Kwun Sun-cheol has explored persistently from the start of his career to the present. Known as the “face artist,” Kwun Sun-cheol has attempted to capture Korean society reflected in the faces of ordinary people including country women and urban laborers since the late 1960s. As part of this activity, he has sketched numerous faces of the poor and marginalized around us―an old woman peddler who has become wearied by life, an old man caught taking a quick nap at the train station―and has transferred them to his canvas. This work consists mainly of dark colors, occasionally mixed with colors in a lighter shade, combining them
with rough brushstrokes to form a strong matiere. These rough brushstrokes become deep wrinkles on the faces of ordinary people who have weathered difficult lives, and sometimes convey an ideological significance in showing a lifetime of suffering. The many and varied faces of the people contain numerous stories reflecting the indescribable quality of their own lives; this may be why Kwun’s faces always seem fresh even though he consistently deals with only a single subject in this series.
Kwun Sun-cheol (b. 1944) received his bachelor’s degree from the Department of Painting at the Seoul National University’s College of Fine Arts in 1971, where he also received his master’s in 1984. In 1989, Kwun emigrated to France where he has continued to practice art. He has held solo exhibitions at Growrich Gallery in 1978; Seoul Museum in 1982; Galerie Frank Hanel, Frankfurt, in 1992; Gallery Chosun in 1993 (“The 4th Lee Joong Sup Art Award Celebration Exhibition”); Gana Art Center in 2000; Doosan Gallery in 2003; Gana Art Center in 2012; and Daegu Art Museum in 2016. He has also taken part in several regular and group exhibitions including “New System” at ARKO Art Center from 1972 to 1977; “Korean Fine Arts Association Exhibition” at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, currently MMCA, from 1979 to 1988; “Humanity” at Kwanhoon Gallery from 1983 to 1989; “Spring in Painting” at Hanlim Gallery in 1998; “Declaration: 100 Artists for Peace” at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, currently MMCA, in 2004; “The Flame
of the Holy Spirit” at Galerie Lumen, Paris, in 2009; and “Eye and Mind of Korean Contemporary Art II？Reinstatement of Realism” at Gana Art Center in 2016. He is the recipient of the 4th Lee Joong Sup Art Award in 1993.
Kwun Sun-cheol creates works in a realist style while emphasizing expressive aspects through rough brushstrokes, thick matiere, squashed figures, and murky tones. Kwun often features mountains, faces, and the human soul as his subject matter in order to express the joys and the sorrows of laborers and the country’s uniquely Korean landscapes. Above all, Kwun Sun-cheol draws ordinary mountains of the kind that can be found around us. It may not seem overwhelming at first glance, yet the way Kwun builds up layers of repetitive brushstrokes creates strong, robust mountain ranges. His other subject, faces, are those of “the Korean elders who have lived through the storms of life” (art critic Kim Yun-soo), as well as those of laborers. For this reason, the surfaces of the faces drawn by Kwun are often emphasized in a way that starkly exposes the matiere as it is applied using layer after layer of dark colors. Such intense expressive brushstrokes became clearer and more pronounced in the “Soul” series. Kwun Sun-cheol has consistently maintained his interest in these three themes from his early period to the present.
