Hanji

In winter, one-year-old branches of paper mulberry are cut and steamed, and the inner bark is stripped off, boiled in lye from plant ash, bleached in the sun, and beaten into fiber; the paper is then lifted from water again and again on a bamboo screen. No chemical bleach is used, and the long fibers interlock, so the paper is soft yet hard to tear, and can take in water, be crumpled, and be layered. From the 1980s Park Seo-bo laid hanji on canvas and, while it was wet, pushed it into ridges with his hands and tools, giving Écriture its look from that decade on.

Stand to the side of an Écriture painting: its ridges are the marks of wet hanji pushed aside and left to dry.

In these works, is the paper a material, or the picture itself?

• Dansaekhwa 단색화→From the 1980s, Park Seo-bo's Écriture was made with hanji.