With the arrival of Informel in 1957, Korean abstract artists began using layered materiality to express the ravages of war, its lingering images, and feelings of emotional pathos. Abstract art would continue to develop with the trends of geometric abstraction in the 1960s and Dansaekhwa (monochrome) in the 1970s, but Korea also witnessed the coexistence of unique qualities associated with various abstract artists who do not belong to either of those categories. One figure within this trend is Rhee Sang-Wooc, an artist who established his own unique world of abstraction through his free alternation between calligraphic abstraction and lyrical geometric abstraction approaches based on single brushstrokes. He opted for an approach of filling the blank spaces on the canvas, yet he realized splashed ink and empty space effects in the most aesthetic of ways. The spontaneity of his single-brushstroke calligraphy does not compulsively clutter the canvas. The lines and colors, the materiality and transparency, the rhythm of tension and release, the layered textures, and the brushstrokes that dart across them—all these things transport Rhee’s paintings into a new realm of abstraction. By choosing a painting methodology of taking advantage of ambivalent properties without relying fully on either aspect, he realized a new historical achievement and blazed a new trail in Korean abstraction. Excerpt from “Rhee Sang-Wooc’s Painting Methodology: Lyrical Geometric Abstraction and Calligraphic Abstraction” Yeon Shim Chung (professor of Art History and Theory, Hongik University)