Han Man Young
Han Man Young (b. 1946, Seoul) is a Korean painter celebrated for a body of work built on the appropriation and juxtaposition of pre-existing images — a technique critics have described as generating a "trans-linear" space and time. Drawing across the whole of art and material history, he freely combines fragments as disparate as Greco-Roman antiquities, Renaissance masterpieces, the tomb murals and clay figurines of the ancient Korean kingdom of Goguryeo, Buddhist statuary, Joseon-dynasty true-view landscape and genre paintings, folk paintings, and blue-and-white porcelain, setting them alongside modern intrusions like old machine parts or smartphone components. The resulting canvases move freely between East and West, past and present, art and everyday life, creation and copy, figuration and abstraction — unsettling any single, stable sense of reality.
He graduated from the Department of Painting at Hongik University's College of Fine Arts in 1972 and completed a degree in Art Education at Konkuk University's Graduate School in 1983, and is Professor Emeritus at the College of Fine Arts, Sungshin Women's University. Across more than two dozen solo exhibitions since 1979 and dozens of major group shows — including the São Paulo Biennial (1981) and a survey exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris (1986) — his work has entered the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Seoul Museum of Art, and numerous other institutions. In 2023–24, Arario Gallery Cheonan mounted Passage between the Real and the Unreal (현실과 비현실을 넘나드는 문), a career-spanning solo exhibition surveying more than fifty years of his practice.
Exhibitions
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2023 Artside, Seoul
2020 Rho Gallery, Seoul
2017 Arario Museum Space, Seoul; Artside, Seoul
2015 Severance Art Space (Art Park), Seoul; Rho Gallery, KIAF, Seoul
2012 Rho Gallery, Seoul
2011 U Art Space, KIAF, Seoul
2009 Rho Gallery, Seoul
2007 Korea Art Gallery, Seoul; Rho Gallery, Seoul
2005 Gana Art Center, Seoul
2004 M Gallery, Daegu
2003 Pyo Gallery, Seoul
2002 Korea International Art Fair — Rho Gallery, BEXCO, Busan
2001 Rho Gallery / Open Studio, Seoul
1999 Garam Gallery, Seoul; Rho Gallery, Seoul
1996 Park Young Deok Gallery, Seoul
1994 Sangmundang Gallery, Seoul; Gallery Nine, Seoul
1992 Doosohn Gallery, Seoul; Sangmundang Gallery, Seoul
1990 Gallery Seomi, Seoul
1987 Hyundai Gallery (Gangnam), Seoul
1984 Dongsanbang Gallery, Seoul
1981 Grolich Gallery, Seoul
1979 Hankuk Gallery, Seoul
Group Exhibitions
2023–24 The Remarkable — group show with Ko Young-Hoon, Kim Jong-Hak, Kim Tschang-Yeul, Kim Whanki, Kim Heung-Soo, Park Seo-Bo, Shin Cheol, Yoon Byung-Ryak, Yun Hyong-keun, Lee Kun-Yong, Lee Bae, Lee Seok-Ju, Lee Se-Hyun, Lee Wal-Chong, Lee Ufan, Lee Hee-Don, Ju Tae-Seok, Chun Kyung-Ja, Choi Young-Wook, Ha Tae-Im, and Han Man-Young, Beaux-Arts Gallery Cheongdam
1994 40 Years of Contemporary Art — Faces, Hoam Gallery, Seoul; The Language and Sentiment of New Form, Donga Gallery, Seoul; Korean Contemporary Art — Form 1978–84, Gain Gallery, Seoul; Seoul–Sapporo Exhibition, Chosun Gallery, Seoul
1993 Seoul Arts Center Opening Exhibition, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul; Emotion Seen by the Heart, Emotion Read by the Eye, Donga Gallery, Seoul; Today and Tomorrow — Status and Cross-Section, Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul
1992 A Cross-Section of Korean Art in the '90s, Sangmundang / Garam Gallery, Seoul; The Vein of Tradition — In Search of Koreanness, Seonam Art Museum, Seoul; Figurative Art Today: Dream vs. Reality, Hyundai Art Gallery, Seoul; Creation and Quotation, Trade Center Hyundai Art Gallery, Seoul; Silk Road Art Journey, Donga City Art Museum, Bupyeong / Saemteo & Yuna Gallery, Seoul
1991 The Art Horizon of a Transitional Era, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul; New Media, New Image, Garam Gallery, Seoul; Hanwon Gallery Opening, Part 3, Hanwon Gallery, Seoul; Korean Contemporary Painting Exhibition, Yugoslavia
1990 Korea–Japan Contemporary Art — Difference and Sameness, Sangmundang Gallery / Art Center, Seoul; The State of Korean Art Today, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul; Seoul, 15 Artists of Today, Hyundai Department Store Apgujeong Art Gallery, Seoul; Image and Abstraction Today, Indeco Art Museum, Seoul; Young Vision — Proposals for Tomorrow, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul
1989 20th-Century Korean Contemporary Art, Hyundai Department Store Apgujeong Art Gallery, Seoul; Form Art of the 1980s, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul; '89 Seoul–Kyoto 37 Artists, Kyoto City Museum, Japan; Korean Contemporary Art — Transitions of the 1980s, Dongsung Art Center Gallery, Seoul; The Temporal Horizon of Dream and Everyday Life, Gallery Seomi, Seoul
1988 Sangmundang Gallery Opening — Three-Artist Exhibition (Park Chung-heum, Han Man Young, Hwang Chang-bae), Sangmundang Gallery, Seoul; Korean Contemporary Art in Commemoration of the Seoul Olympics, MMCA, Seoul; Korean Contemporary Art Today, Total Museum, Jangheung; After Modernism, Hyundai Department Store Trade Center Art Gallery, Seoul
1987–92 Contemporary Art Invitational, MMCA, Seoul
1987 Plane, Object, and Image, Su Gallery, Seoul; Message by 13 Artists, Baeksong Gallery, Seoul; Gallery Hyundai Opening — Artists of the 1980s, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul
1986–87 Image & Object, Grolich Gallery, Seoul
1986 Korean Contemporary Art Exhibition, Grand Palais, France; Batanggol Museum Opening — Form by Seven Artists, Batanggol Art Museum, Seoul; Korean Art Yesterday and Today, MMCA, Seoul; Seoul Art Fair, Garam Gallery / Deoksugung Art Museum, Seoul
1985–88 Contemporaries Exhibition, Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul
1985 2nd Asian Contemporary Art Exhibition, Fukuoka, Japan; Seven Artists — Today's Work, Baeksong Gallery, Seoul
1983 Form by 11 Artists, Su Gallery, Daegu; Seoul International Drawing Exhibition, Art Center, Seoul; Bangladesh Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh; Korean Contemporary Art — Currents of the 1970s, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan
1982 Korean Contemporary Print & Drawing Exhibition, Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul; Total Museum Opening Invitational, Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul
1981 The Situation of Today, Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul; 1st Busan Young Artists' Biennale, Busan; Elite Artists Invitational for the 36th Anniversary of Seoul Sinmun, Lotte Gallery, Seoul; São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil
1980 62 Korean Contemporary Artists Invitational, Dongbang Gallery, Busan
1979, 1990 École de Séoul, MMCA, Seoul
1978 Form '78, Art Center, Seoul; Three-Artist Exhibition (Lee Doo-sik, Cha Dae-deok, Han Man Young), Hankuk Gallery, Seoul; Asian Contemporary Art Festival, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Japan
1977 2nd Gwangju Contemporary Art Festival, Jeonil Art Museum, Gwangju
1976 1st Busan Contemporary Art Festival, Citizens' Hall, Busan
1976–86 2nd–12th Seoul Contemporary Art Festival, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul
1974–77 2nd & 3rd Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, Keimyung University Museum, Daegu
1974 Korean Experimental Artists Exhibition, Daegu Department Store, Daegu