Sang A Han's New Korean Tradition

Tradition and innovation. A marriage that is at the heart of the artistic practice of San A Han, a Korean artist who lives in Seoul and who for the first time - after the monograph dedicated to her by the important Korean institution OCI Museum of Art - arrives in the West at the Galleria Fumagalli in Milan with this exhibition dedicated to her. The Italian occasion explores some of the themes dear to the young Korean artist: those of traditional oriental painting, such as the Sansu-hwa, the landscape paintings of the Josen era, and the Gwaneum-do, the Buddhist icons that reflect religious wishes for blessing , which are reborn in a modern and innovative key. San A Han transforms them into soft sculptures and layered paintings made with Meok (China ink), cotton fabric and seams that become the result of an intimate revisitation of tradition through a creation process that the artist herself defines performative. In her visual, figurative and symbolic languages, San A Han does not limit herself to constructing logical and organized narratives, but she portrays fragmented memories and contradictory emotions, focusing above all on the contrasts linked to love. According to the artist, "line is the essence of traditional Korean painting." To paint her inner landscape, Han uses a brush and needle that respond directly to her body and its associated movements. Thus, just as the bodily strength of holding and moving the brush is reflected in the lines drawn with the Meok, the stitching lines reveal the performative process through which the artist conceives her artworks.