Bang Hai Ja

Bang Hai Ja - Rétrospective

from October 15th to 11.07.2015

Galerie Penthièvre

Bang Hai Ja, who has been one of the first Korean artist to move in and work in France, participated to more than 80 personal exhibitions in Korea, in Europe, in America and all around the world. On the occasion of her third monograph called "Bang Hai Ja – Chant de lumière", she exhibited a selection of her recent works at the Korean Cultural Center.


Since her arrival in France, at the beginning of the sixties, Bang Hai Ja continues her quest of light, both artistic and spiritual, through her pictorial works. According to the artist, it is a question of internal light, of the one that can only be seen by "the eye of the heart". She wants her work to be the reflection of the internal light that comes from each material. It is the act of painting that filled her with energy and light - vital elements to life -, and that helps her to transcribe the essence of things. This process is for the artist a self-fulfilment ultimately.


Bang Hai Ja is part of the first Korean abstract art generation. In this art that wants to liberate from any representation, she discovered the light through material. The artist's researches are on the union of light and material ; the immaterial joins the material and both opposite elements blend. "Putting a touch of colour on the canvas, it is sowing a seed of peace and light." the artist says. In a contemplative state, she put her colours, on geotextile or on rice paper, as if she was sowing words in her poems, activity that often goes with her pictorial creation. As a constellation, her canvas sparkle just like each of her words and moves, and lull us by their sweet shimmering light, making luminous those who contemplate it. With Bang Hai Ja, painting is first of all and before everything else passing down, sharing and helping to discover this energy, this light inside us.