At first it looks like intense sunlight beating down, then a sparkling eye comes to mind. This is "Land of Sky," a 2011 work by Bang Hai-ja (1937-2022). For Bang, a first-generation abstract painter who spent her life exploring light and was called the "painter of light," light is not merely an optical phenomenon. It is the light of life and the mind, layered with time spent at mountain temples in her childhood, the trajectory of a life crossing the eras of liberation and war, and years moving between Korea and France.
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) is holding "Bang Hai-ja: Scattering the Light of the Mind Across Heaven and Earth" at its Cheongju branch through September 27. The artist, who went to France in 1961 as the country's first state-funded art student, built her own distinct artistic world by drawing nourishment from both Korean and French cultures. During her eight-year return to Korea starting in 1968, she saw Korea's nature and colors anew, discovered the beauty of dak paper, and began incorporating it into her work. Her unique originality was recognized by the overseas art world before Korea, and as she spent more than half her life in France, what Korea knew of Bang Hai-ja was only a small part.
Her reflections penetrating life and the universe led to building earth in the sky. Bang, who exchanged with writers including Park Kyung-ni and Park Wan-suh as well as French poets, painted "Land of Sky" in the year Park Kyung-ni, author of "Toji (The Land)," passed away. A work by Bang hangs in the living room where Park spent her final days, now part of the Toji Culture Center. At Chartres Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site in France, four stained glass works by Bang are installed, and a reproduction of one of them, "Birth of Light," can also be seen at the exhibition.
Planned as part of the 140th anniversary commemorative projects for Korea-France diplomatic ties, this exhibition presents more than half of the 67 total works — including pieces held by the Centre Pompidou and the Cernuschi Museum in Paris — in Korea for the first time.
Bang became interested in abstract art while studying at the Contemporary Art Institute run by Yoo Young-kuk and Kim Byung-ki in the late 1950s. "Jisim (Heart of the Earth)," a 1961 work representative of that period, embodies impressions she gained from visiting Mount Toham and Seokguram Grotto in Gyeongju. The rare opportunity to view "Jisim," which conveys transcendence and solemnity, side by side in the MMCA collection version and the Centre Pompidou collection version (1960) is another highlight of the exhibition.
From the late 1980s, works resembling cosmic nebulae began to appear. Astrophysicists who visited her studio at the time were reportedly astonished that Bang expressed through intuition what they captured through research. The artist took an interest in the universe and the five elements, contemplating both the vast world and minute existence simultaneously. The small dots on her canvas are like the countless seeds of life that make up the universe.
