Ha ChongHyun, born in 1935, is one of the most distinguished contemporary Korean artists. HaChongHyun works with plain, woven hemp into which he pushes thick paint from the obverse side of the canvas. Ha’s interest in the simple muted tones of hemp stem from his work in the 1970s when he bravely explored non-traditional materials including plaster, newspaper, barbed wire, and the burlap.

Ha used oil paint thereby synthesizing the traditions from both the East and the West. His technique of pushing paint through the canvas from behind remains as a powerful gesture, all the more because of the formal beauty and subtle gesture captured using this approach. Conjunction, uniformly titled for three decades, i...