Painter seeks to portray reality in unique 'Blankism'
 The  Korea  Herald (Daily  News  Paper)  January  16,  1998

 In his paintings, aspects of reality are expressed through graphic description of everyday events and natural landscapes. And the job is done in a unique way.

Painter Cho Sang-Hyun excludes anything abstract and imaginary from his works so everyone can understand them with ease and comfort. To that end, Cho tries to depict things as they are without adding any artificial elements. Cho, 48, calls his painting technique "Blankism". He announced the "Declaration of Blankism" at the opening ceremony of his painting exhibition yesterday, which will run at Dansung Gallery till Sunday.

The artist says, "My paintings are composed of three easily understandable patterns of space: empty space, mid space and expressed space. Such a pattern helps viewers appreciate them with ease and comfort." "The theme of Blankism is closely related to reality. I attempt to convey soft, visual and flexible messages by showing things in their natural state rather than in an artificial or imaginary state. Furthermore, the idea of Blankism is to give strength and encouragement to people who live in this modern world."

In order words, he adds, the purpose of Blankism is to instill freshness in the tired body and soul of people living in an industrial society by employing simple and realistic motifs.  Cho's Blankism is also based on recognizing that new things are gradually developed from past traditions rather than created suddenly. "I was en couraged by our ancestors' great inventions such as hangul, or the Korean alphabet, and the iron-clad battleship Turtle Boat," Cho says.

Therefore, Blankism stresses the beauty of empty space, which was dominant in Korea's traditional paintings and centered around such concepts as reduction, meditation and movement among stillness, Cho explains.  In that sense, Cho's Blankism is his attempt to revive the spirit of traditional Korean art and regain Korea's national identy. To him, Blankism means wiping out the "dirty" aspect of Western art by introducing the traditional Korean philosophy of harmony, cleanliness and pragmatism.  Most people livingin post-industrial society have lost their identity and the loss of identity means losing everything in life, says Cho, adding that Blankism is an attempt to regain our identity through art and thus revitalize our body and soul.

"I hope Blankism deep-rooted in our tradition will become a new trend in art that will suit Korean sensibility, and have some influence on the international art world," Cho says.

 by Kwak Young-Sup(The Korea Herald , Reporter / Culture Desk)

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Blankism  by  Cho  Sang-Hyun

 Born in 1952 in Kangwon Province, Korea, Cho Sang-Hyun received his M.F.A. degree from Hong-Ik University of Seoul. The recipient of numerous awards, he exhibited his work both at home and abroad, and lectured at various universites. In 1981 he founded the now world-famous Seoul International Fine Arts Centre. The author of The Recognition of Life through Graphic Reality since 1972(1997), Cho Sang-Hyun displayed his paintings in January 1998 at Seoul's Dansung Gallery, and published the DECLARATION OF BLANKISM.

Blankism intends to bring a new life to the masses, to revitalize the body and the soul through the simple beauty of artistic realism. It embraces the premise that people in the post-industrial global society have lost their identity. Its quest is to regain Korea's national identity by wiping out the polluting aspects of Western influence and replacing them by such traditional Korean values as meditation, harmony, cleanliness and pragmatism. Blankism reflects the tension and unity of antagonistic entities; like movement and stillness, simplicity and complexity, reduction and expansion. It strives to revive the once dominant feature of traditional Korean art, the reverence for empty space as the central element of composition. In Blankism the composition is divided into figure and ground by an easily-grasped design of empty space, mid-space, and expressed space.

The idea of Blankism echoes lessons learnt from Eastern history and spiritual traditions, the tenets of Buddhism and Confucius, from ancient Korean inventions, among them the ironclad turtle-shaped battle ship and the metallic print letters of Hangul. These lead to the conclusion that novelty develops gradually rather than all of a sudden. Moreover, transitoriness characterizes every aspect of the unity of what exists and what does not. Accordingly, human life is seen as an ephemeral visitation; a fleeting moment hanging on the invisible cord of infinity and the dark mystery of the void. There is no clear line of demarcation between life and death. Existence and nothingness cannot be separated.

The Declaration of Blankism has been enthusiastically received in Kotrea. All the major news papers and mass media in Seoul--including The Segye Times, The Dong-A Daily, The Seoul Economic Daily, The Daily Sports and KBS TV, MBC TV, YTN TV--reported the event and reproduced images from the exhibition. The Korea Herald, the English daily published in Seoul, quotes the artist: " I hope

Blankism deep-rooted in our tradition will become a new trend in art that suit Korean sensibility, and have some influence on the international art world " (January 16 ,1998).

May 4, 1998  Paul Hartal (Canadian Artist and Poet / Ph.D.)

 Exhibit compares differences of Eastern and Western Neo-realists

(The  Korea  Herald,  August  5,  1999 / Culture)

Much talk in the local art community has focused on the overwhelming influence of the West on eastern art and culture, with much of the criticism condemning the West for a hegemonic takeover of the East. Historically, however, it has been the very propagation of art and culturethat has allowed different cultures to make their own innovations. Thus, even similar styles havebeen employed differently in different countries, and in the process, have taken on separate and unique characteristics of the cultures and individual backgrounds of the artists.

This diversity can be seen clearly in the recent Dansung Gallery exhibit of two neo-realists-one, a western artist who has spen t his career innovating his culture, and the other, a Korean artist, trying to reclaim it.

Antoni Miro is a Spanish painter who has spent over 35 years on perfecting realist technique and actively criticizing social ills. His subjects follow the most pervasive issues of recent Western history, including the Vietnam War and racism in black America; and they focus on the rejection of oppression and the improvement of society through freedom and human solidarity. His interest in these themes led him to a Neo-figurativism, which in the 1970s was identified with the artistic movement known as Cronica de la realitat(Chronicle of Reality),which were part of the movements critical of mass media and pop culture. This movement was identified with international trends in Pop Art and Realism.

Realism takes on a significantly different meaning for Cho, Sang-Hyun, the Korean native of Kangnung City. Cho declared his from of realism, called "Blankism" in January of 1998. While Miro's works move more towards human innovation, Cho's fidelity to reality in his paintings is an attempt at a return to the Korean values of meditation, harmony cleanliness and pragmatism, which have been lost in the process of modernization and industrialization.

A first impression of Cho's Blankism can appear to be ultranationalistic, and in its extreme-xenophobic, as it espouses a purification of Korea's national identity from the influences of the West. But Cho is careful to add that he is not seeking an ideology of prejudice. Instead, he argues, that Korea needs a period of departure from its modern, meaning "western," self to root itself more firmly with its past. Without this rootedness, he believes, Korean artists can never develop their own kind of art. Thus Cho's neo-realism requires one to return to the historical and spiritual traditions of Buddhism and Confucianism, upon which the Eastern world was founded.

In those traditions, the distinction between antagonistic forces like life and d eath are part of the whole. In its most representative form, the expression of this philosophy is shown through the artist's balancing of empty space and composition in his paintings. When one looks at his paintings, they realize that the pictures in the paintings are utterly dependent on the "blank" spaces of the canvas for their visual existence as recognizable objects. Thus existence and nothingness cannot be separated, as Paul Hartal, a critic of Cho's work, says.

Both Miro and Cho have held numberous solo and group exhibitions abroad and in their home countries, and are highly acclaimed artists in journals and newspapers worldwide. Miro is presently working at Mas Sopalmo, Spain, while Cho lectures at several of Korea's most prestigious art universities. Their two person invitational exhibition will be held until Aug. 10 at the Dansung Gallery in Insadong, Seoul.

 by John Sullivan (The Korea Herald, Staff reporter)

The Old East & the New East

What does the Blankism mean?

-on the arts world of the Korean Painter, Cho, Sang-Hyun and his Declaration of Blankism

Authored by  Szombathy Balint(Hungarian, Arts Critic)

In the midst of the floods of the fine arts beyond the variety of the isms, a new trend of arts sprang in Seoul, Korea. Cho, Sang-Hyun(1952) made a personal declaration of the new ism the Blankism. This can be called to be a concentrated aggregate of his artistic journey over 25 years, which is explained as a perfect Extreme Reality. This is not a coincidence. Because his world of art is only different from that of the ism and the thesis named by the Western art.

The concept of the Blankism started from the rediscovery of the traditional and localistic value. It puts emphasis on the identity, against the ever increasing trends of the Globalization. The origin of the Blankism in response to the "contaminated" Western arts is based on the traditional idea of the Korean arts and appearances.

The starting point of his works is the provision of the meditation opportunity for the appreciators or the audiences to find the ego from the blank or the empty space. This is categorized into 3 spaces; that is, empty space, mid space, and the expressed space, in which he tries to make it easy and simple for appreciators to appreciate his works. He want us to overcome the destroying identity of the contemporary people living in the post-modern society filled with fatique by means of the traditional routines and philosophy.

We can trace back to the early lessons from the Budhism. The living body is just a transitory state of the soils. The difference between birth and death is just temporary. The process of the transition of the materials as nothing but a mixture of the temporary, body as material and the nature. The spirit is eternal compared to material. The process is an eternal cycle. The Blankism is extracted from the wisdom of the Korea. His world of art trigs to minimize the expression of materialistic world. As said, "Emptiness is eternal".

The background of the Blankism is the recognition of the danger of the materialistic Western view on the Eastern traditions. The Western arts considered as the essence of the contemporary arts are just a part of the World arts, which implies that Local values significant.

¡ÜTranslated by Choi Chang-hyeon (Professor of Kwandong University, Ph.D)