Oh Yoon

About the exhibition

Yonhap reports 31 finished works shown with about 300 related items: printing blocks, studies, drawings and notes. The Seoul Museum of Art says it has newly organized these materials for display and uses the carving marks left on the blocks to take a fresh look at the prints. Yonhap singles out the 1985 print Dokkaebi with its 220 cm wide rubber block. It also reports the prints Oh Yoon made for literature, including Kim Chi-ha's Ojeok and Park No-hae's Nodong-ui Saebyeok.

The show marks forty years since the death of Oh Yoon, a leading figure in Minjung art, the socially engaged Korean people's art of the 1980s. It draws on the collection the archive has gathered on the artist.

Six chapters take titles from the artist's notes. They move through university work, the wounds of modern Korean history, recording neighbors and daily life, critical views on art tied to the group Reality and Utterance, the communal energy of the peak years and a travel diary written at fifteen. Admission is free.

About the artist

Oh Yoon (1946–1986) was born in Busan and studied sculpture at Seoul National University, the Seoul Museum of Art says. The artist formed the Reality Group in 1969 while a student and in the 1970s built a visual language around woodblock prints, along with tile work, book covers and illustrations. Oh joined the founding of Reality and Utterance in 1979, held a first solo show at Geurimmadang Min in 1986 and died that year at forty.

Sources: Seoul Museum of Art: exhibition page