[Gallery Walk] Whose Art Is It?... Where Oh Yoon’s Carving Knife Was Aimed

The 40th Anniversary Memorial Exhibition at the Seoul Museum Archive
Rereading People's Art through 31 Completed Works and 300 Archival Items
Printmaking, Literature, Shamanic Rituals—Oh Yoon Beyond the Label of "People's Art"

An important question for understanding Oh Yoon’s prints is not merely what he depicted, but for whom his images were intended. The print “Jirisan” (1977), used for the cover of Park Kyung-ni’s novel “Land” starting in 1979, illustrates this point well. The artwork did not remain confined to the walls of a museum but became the face of a book, reaching out to readers. Oh Yoon created covers, illustrations, and posters for poetry and novels as he sought ways for art to speak directly to people.

Oh Yoon, , 1985, rubber block printing on cotton, color painting, 87.5×207cm. This work dynamically captures goblins sharing food and dancing, showcasing Oh Yoon's unique humor and exuberance. Collection of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art · Seoul Museum of Art

Original rubber print of Goblin, 1985, by Oh Yoon. The print shows the process of making the print completed through the traces of carving, depicting goblins eating, drinking, and mingling together. Seoul Museum of Art

The 40th anniversary retrospective commemorating Oh Yoon’s passing (1946–1986), which opened on September 8 at the Seoul Museum of Art Archive in Pyeongchang-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, revisits this very question. The exhibition features 31 completed works, alongside more than 300 materials including original print plates, studies, drawings, and notebooks. Visitors are invited to trace not only the final outcomes, but also the process by which a single image is created and then delivered to someone else.

Oh Yoon is regarded as a leading figure in the Minjung art movement of the 1980s. While this description is not incorrect, it is not sufficient to fully understand him. The label “Minjung art” may explain the political tone of his works, but it tends to overshadow the questions of what artistic forms he explored, why he chose woodblock printing, and what he saw in the gestures of ordinary people. Rather than commemorating Oh Yoon as a fixed character in art history, this exhibition reinterprets him as an artist who continually changed his methods and sought his own visual language.

A woodblock print study titled , created by Oh Yoon in 1977. This work captures the expression of the figure using bold lines and simplified forms. The exhibition presents the process of finding a unique visual language through book art and printmaking. Seoul Museum of Art

While studying at Seoul National University College of Fine Arts in 1969, he organized the group “Hyeonsil Dongin” (The Reality Group), and in 1979 participated in the founding of “Hyeonsilgwa Bareon” (Reality and Utterance). Through work at brick kilns and book illustration, he established his unique visual language in woodblock printmaking, reaching his artistic peak in the mid-1980s by dynamically expressing themes of sorrow and exuberance. In 1986, after hosting his first solo exhibition at Geurim Madang Min, he passed away at the age of forty.

The exhibition is organized according to six titles taken from Oh Yoon’s notes and jottings, such as “Gaedo Chi Oh Yoon,” “There is a Soul in the Land,” “As Is Rightly Expressed,” “The Collective Energy That Includes Myself,” and “I, Too, Am Going.” While following a chronological flow, each section’s title, drawn from his notes, allows visitors to observe how his ideas developed in tandem with his works.

The 1976 woodblock print prototype of Oh Yun's "Dawn of Labor" (left) and Park Nohae's first poetry collection "Dawn of Labor" (1984). Oh Yun created the title font on the cover of the poetry collection and the print "Dawn," and included "Dawn of Labor" inside. The woodblock print depicting the back of a laborer originated from the figure of the worker O Hushik, whom he met at the brick workshop in Gyeongju. Seoul Museum of Art

In this context, the original print plates are not merely supplementary materials to the finished works. Lines that appear smooth and confident when printed on paper are revealed on the plates as visible choices guided by the artist’s hand. Decisions of what to leave and what to remove, the degree of simplification—these become clear. The structure of production leads viewers to consider how Oh Yoon’s figures are read as people working, crying, and dancing, despite being depicted only with several bold lines.

The pathway by which Oh Yoon’s images reached people was primarily through books. During his lifetime, he contributed cover art and illustrations to forty-five different publications, with 137 prints and 76 paintings featured in these works. For Park Nohae’s first poetry collection, “Dawn of Labor” (1984), Oh Yoon designed both the title font for the cover and the print “Dawn,” including his work “Dawn of Labor” inside. The depiction of the laborer’s back in this print was not some abstract image of the people. The worker O Hushik, whom Oh Yoon met at a brick factory in Gyeongju, was one of his favored subjects. Day laborers and shoe repairers encountered near his studio in Gaori, Suyu-dong, as well as the life of a neighbor raising a young son alone, were also left behind in his drawings.

Printmaking tools and coloring materials used by the artist exhibited in the Seoul Museum of Art Archive "Oh Yoon." Through the carving tools, paints, and various items used in the work, one can examine Oh Yoon's production methods and creative process. Photo by Nam Gi-yong, Seoul Museum of Art

His late work “Dokkaebi” (1985) reveals what more Oh Yoon sought from the lives of these people. On a scene inscribed with lines from the Bongsan Talchum “Palmokjung Dance,” dokkaebi (goblins) dance, play drums, wrestle, and drink alcohol. The curved lines radiating from their bodies seem to suggest that exuberance spreads from one person to another. Excerpts from his notebook, such as “The collective exuberance that includes myself,” and “The playfulness of work and narrative of play,” provide interpretive keys to this scene. Rather than simply portraying the oppressed, he aspired to depict a world where these people move, laugh, and mingle together of their own accord.

This year, when the terracotta relief created by Oh Yoon in 1973 with Oh Kyunghwan and Yoon Gwangjoo at the former Commercial Bank building in Guui-dong, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, was threatened with demolition, a preservation movement began—bringing his art into the present day. When an artwork created to reach people outlives its era, a new set of questions emerges: how should it be preserved, and in whose space should it remain? The act of collecting original print plates and notebooks in museums, and protecting works that survive within the urban context, each serve as different responses to the same inquiry.

Oh Yoon (1946–1986) during his time at Seoul National University College of Fine Arts from 1965 to 1970. The 40th anniversary retrospective exhibition "Oh Yoon" introduces his life and artistic exploration before he established himself as a leading printmaker in the Minjung art movement, through the artist's photographs, notes, and sketches. Seoul Museum of Art

The final section, “I, Too, Am Going,” is inspired by the travel diary Oh Yoon wrote at fifteen years old. An exhibition that looks back on his life, which ended at forty, thus concludes with the words of his youth. The works and documents displayed in between show that this artist did not walk straight down a single path towards a predetermined destination. Instead, he met people, experimented with various forms, and sought his own language. The reason Oh Yoon’s prints continue to resonate forty years later lies not only in the political messages he left behind. Art is about adopting someone’s lived experience as its own language, and finding ways to return that experience to others. The questions he grappled with throughout his life remain just as relevant today.

The exhibition will run until February 14 of next year at the Collection Wing of the Seoul Museum of Art Archive. Admission is free.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.