[비즈한국] The 'Korean Art Support Project' Season 12 has launched, a program dedicated to cultivating the fertile soil of Korean art. This initiative is now recognized within the art world as a meaningful event for discovering and fostering artists. It has earned a reputation among artists as a project they aspire to join. The fundamental keyword that the 'Korean Art Support Project' has pursued from the beginning is 'the embrace of diverse trends in Korean art and the pursuit of developmental change.' As a fruit of these principles, it is evaluated as having established a perspective for viewing modern Korean art.
Among the most basic elements of painting, the first that comes to mind is the 'touch.' It refers to the various marks made by a brush. Dots, straight lines, curves, and both soft or rough marks and lines all belong to the category of touch. This is why experts call it the 'language of painting' and evaluate paintings where the touch is prominent as having high pictorial quality.
The recognition of touch as an important element of painting began with Impressionism in 19th-century Europe. These are the paintings where the brushwork—the kind we usually associate with painting—became the main focus. Before that, paintings were rendered as smooth as photographs, without visible touch.
Brushstrokes emerged in the Impressionist era as a new method for representing objects. It was intended to capture the fleeting feelings the artist perceived in objects or nature immediately on the canvas.
However, entering the 20th century, brushstrokes moved beyond being a secondary means to express objects and transformed into a new existence that holds meaning in itself. The emergence of abstract painting made this possible.
12 Solo Exhibitions (2025 'drift of leaves-M collect.19', 2021 'my miracle-Sejong Gallery', etc.), numerous group exhibitions (2026 'WISH-Tibaeg Samcheong Showroom', 2024 'Telepathy-Gallery Colorbit', 2024 'The Heart That Paints Flowers' Nam Hak-hyun, Park Jung-won, Han Cha-yeon 3-person exhibition-M.collect.19, etc.)
Collections
Dorocy Ikseon Showroom, Government Art Bank, Diheir Cheongdam, Hongik Neurosurgery Clinic, E-Land Cultural Foundation, etc.
Education and Career
Graduated from Kookmin University, College of Fine Arts, Department of Painting and Graduate School
While brushstrokes only began to be highlighted as a full-fledged element of painting in the West in the 19th century, they have played a fundamental role in art in the East for a very long time. The representative art form is calligraphy.
Calligraphy is an art expressed solely through brushstrokes. During the Joseon Dynasty, calligraphy held a higher status than painting. This was because it was believed that calligraphy was more effective than painting in capturing the spiritual world of the literati, who were the ruling class.
Because of this, in the late Joseon Dynasty, painting began to follow calligraphy. It was a method of creating paintings using calligraphic brushwork. Artists like Buksan Kim Su-cheol and Ubong Jo Hee-ryong became prominent in art history by creating new styles of painting using the brush techniques of calligraphy.
This is often referred to as the 'eccentric school' or 'new-sense landscape.' Figures like Chusa Kim Jeong-hui created their own unique brushwork (the Chusa style), and the painting created with that script, 'Sehando' (National Treasure No. 180), is considered one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of Korean painting.
Such examples can also be found in 20th-century Western art. This is what is known as 'calligraphic abstraction,' a branch of post-war abstraction—essentially abstract painting created with the brushwork of calligraphy. Lee Ufan, who was involved in the Japanese Minimalism movement, is also a representative painter who succeeded by creating a new sense of abstract painting using calligraphic brushstrokes.
Entering this century, brushstrokes are broadening their horizons as an artistic language. This occurs both through methods based on abstraction and through cases where meaning is imbued into the touch itself. Nam Hak-hyun's painting follows the latter.
He expresses his own thoughts through brushstrokes by borrowing the forms of plants. His paintings represent the shifting of momentary emotions through the overlapping of brushstrokes. It is a screen that resembles an abstract painting, harmonized by sophisticated color palettes. Through this, the artist says he wants to express his interest in the world that lies behind, rather than the world visible to the eye.