The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion

Adolph Gottlieb and Kim Whanki

On View
Oct 31, 2025 – Jan 10, 2026
Seoul

Pace is pleased to present The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion, a pair of exhibitions of works by American Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb and pioneering Korean painter Kim Whanki, at its Seoul gallery.

On view across two floors of the gallery from October 31 to January 10, these dual presentations—organized in collaboration with the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and the Whanki Foundation—offer viewers an opportunity to witness how two 20th century figures with different cultural and philosophical backgrounds visualized their unique perspectives and forged a universal language through abstraction.

Gottlieb’s paintings fuse intuitive shapes with bold color fields to visualize emotion and the unconscious, while Kim’s canvases employ repeated dots and refined chromatic structures to evoke an Eastern sense of meditation and cosmic order. Deeply moved by his first encounter with Gottlieb’s work in the U.S. Pavilion at the São Paulo Biennale in 1963, Kim subsequently relocated to New York, where he embarked on one of the most intense periods of his career. Immersed in the city’s dynamic art scene, he gradually eliminated figurative references from his work, refining his language into dots, lines, and planes. His restrained compositions and luminous fields of meticulously placed dots evoke skies, seas, and constellations, transforming time and space into poetic abstractions. His celebrated Dot Paintings series, completed during these years, played a key role in the introduction of Korean Modernism to the global stage. Pace’s exhibition of Kim’s work from the late 1960s to the early 1970s will focus on the development of his Dot Paintings from structural compositions using crosses and quadrants (Sibjagudo).

A central figure of the New York School alongside Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Gottlieb was at the vanguard of American Abstract Expressionism. His Pictographs of the 1940s used an all-over grid structure and invented symbols to give form to the unconscious, and in the 1950s he developed his signature Burst series: paintings that juxtapose a floating orb with explosive brushwork. These compositions dramatize the tensions between order and chaos, color, and form, inviting universal and intuitive responses rather than prescribing narrative meaning. Pace’s presentation in Seoul includes a selection of works produced by Gottlieb during the 1960s and 1970s, including the large-scale painting Expanding (1962), along with canvases from his Imaginary Landscapes series, which utilize the form of landscape painting to include unlimited perception.

Though their practices were rooted in distinct cultural contexts, Kim and Gottlieb are connected by a shared pursuit of universality—using color, symbol, and structure to explore humanity, the cosmos, and the realm of emotion. The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion is conceived as a dialogue, where the visual and emotional resonances between their works illuminate the boundless possibilities of abstraction and its enduring significance in art history.

Kim Whanki departed from São Paulo to New York, leaving behind his achievements in Korea to take on new challenges in the emerging center of modern art. The shock from Gottlieb’s paintings had propelled him into a new world.

Kim Min-jeong, (opens in a new window) The Chosun Daily

About the Artists

Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph Gottlieb worked his passage to Europe when he was seventeen, after studying briefly at The Art Students League. He spent six months in Paris visiting the Louvre every day and auditing classes at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. Gottlieb made his solo debut in 1930. In 1935, he became a founding member of “The Ten,” a group of artists devoted to expressionist and abstract painting. Eight years later, he would become a founding member of another group of abstract painters, “The New York Artist Painters,” that included Mark Rothko, John Graham, and George L. K. Morris. In 1943, Gottlieb co-authored and published a letter with Rothko in The New York Times, expressing what is now considered to be the first formal statement of the concerns of the Abstract Expressionist artists.

Kim Whanki

Kim Whanki is recognized as one of the pioneers of abstract modernism in South Korea during the twentieth century. The artist studied at Nihon University, Tokyo, from 1933 to 1936, a period during which he began exploring abstraction. From 1946 to 1950, he served as a professor in the Department of Western Painting at Seoul National University, and from 1952 to 1955 as professor and dean of the Department of Western Painting at Hongik University, Seoul. He was appointed as President of the Fine Arts Association in 1963.

EXHIBITION DETAILS

Adolph Gottlieb
Kim Whanki
The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion
Oct 31, 2025 – Jan 10, 2026

GALLERY

267 Itaewon-ro
Yongsan-gu
Seoul

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The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion

Adolph Gottlieb and Kim Whanki

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About the Artists

Adolph Gottlieb

Kim Whanki

EXHIBITION DETAILS

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