This April, the Venice Art Biennale returns after a three-year pandemic-related hiatus (preview days 20–23; first public opening day 23 April; runs until 27 November). In the fifth of our five-part preview, Frieze editorial staff name the collateral events and off-site exhibitions they're most looking forward to seeing.
Ha Chong–hyun
Palazzetto Tito (Istituzione Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa)
The Kukje Art and Culture Foundation—in partnership with La Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice; Kukje Gallery, Seoul; and Tina Kim Gallery, New York—presents a solo show of the South Korean painter Ha Chong–hyun. A pioneer of the Dansaekhwa movement—a practice of monochromatic and minimalist painting that started in 1970s South Korea—Ha will showcase more than 20 works from the past six decades of his career. The exhibition also comprises more recent paintings from his ‘Conjunction’ series (1974–ongoing), a group of tableaux that utilize his signature bae-ap-bub method, in which the artist pushes oil paint through from the back of the raw canvas to the front. Much like his fellow Dansaekhwa artists, such as Lee Ufan and Park Seo-Bo, Ha concerns himself with the physicality of painting and the manipulation of materials, creating impasto layers of rectangular-shaped marks that sit on the surfaces of his canvases with great heft and remarkable balance.