“meditative” aspects of his work were also attributed to his monochromatic palettes that usually featured white, black, and beige. In 1980s, Chung’s Tak Series (named after the name of mulberry tree used to make hanji) solidified his trademark use and manipulation of hanji and wet tak paper on canvas. Tak was a paper material used in architecture such as for screen doors and windows. Chung had a childhood encounter with sunlight shining through a tak paper window which later inspired him to highlight the permeable nature of tak on a physical and conceptual level. During his artistic process utilizing tak, he noted that, “In battering and kneading tak, I unknowingly put my breath, odour, and finally my soul in to the process, thus becoming a part of the process itself.” In 1884 he held his first solo exhibition in Korea. In the 1990’s his dedication to tak was furthered in his Medidation Series. After spreading the wet pulp on canvas, he would impress shapes and lines onto the surface to create a smooth areas amidst the bumpy mixture. Sometimes he would color the pulp with natural pigments such as tobacco leaves and charcoal to achieve a darker hue. The effect was more controlled than his earlier Tak Series, and evoked an “opening” that meditation can bring to one’s chaotic mind. The impressions of quadrilateral shapes highlight the rough edges and limits of the canvas plane. The rough edges allude to the tenuous bordes between all substances in reality that are transcended during meditation. His process is controlled and yet there is always an element of happenstance and chance since the pulp settles and dries on the canvas in unique ways. In the artist’s words the works are, “paintings that hanji paints by itself.” Korean art critic Yoon Jin-sup remarks that Chung’s, “creations are placed within an ecological, cosmological, and terrestrial perspective which is diametrically opposed to the formalist vision of Westerners.” Critic Lee Yil described Dansaekhwa artists to work in a, “post-minimal abstraction that is both post-formalist and post-materialist.” While that may be the critics’ takes, formal elements of Chung’s work were certainly guided by Eastern philosophy such as Dao (The Way) and Western elements of minimalist abstraction. National Documentary Paintings Project Chung was the childhood friend of Kim Jong-pil, Park Chung-hee’s right hand man and chair of the Democratic Republican Party. In 1966, the National Documentary Paintings Production Office