Installation view of "Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1966-2006" at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Today, it's no longer difficult to envision paintings breaking free from the traditional confines of flat rectangles. Artists push these boundaries daily — tearing, slitting, draping, cutting and stitching their canvases into bold new forms.

But decades ago, such formal experimentation was nothing short of radical. Among the trailblazers behind this revolutionary departure were Kenneth Noland (1924-2010) and Sam Gilliam (1933-2022), visionaries who each redefined postwar American abstraction.

In Noland's hands, painted square canvases transformed into elongated rhombuses, irregular heptagons and whimsical assemblages. Gilliam abandoned the canvases' wooden stretchers altogether, instead hanging pigment-soaked fabric freely from ceilings. Their spirit of innovation also extended to the way they infused color into their luscious compositions.

Now, these two towering abstractionists are in dialogue at Pace Gallery Seoul, where the two shows — "Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1966-2006" and "Sam Gilliam: The Flow of Color" — unfold concurrently across the gallery's three floors.

Installation view of "Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1966-2006" at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Noland is recognized as a founding member of the Washington Color School, a movement rooted in Color Field painting — a non-representational approach that emphasized unbroken expanses and swathes of color as the driving force of composition.

His chromatic works, defined by crisp-edged pigments arranged in concentric circles, stripes, plaids, diamonds and chevrons, were instrumental in forging the visual language of postwar abstraction in the United States.

Noland's fascination with geometric forms soon extended beyond the composition and began influencing the very shape of his canvases. This evolution is evident in his signature paintings from the 1960s through the early 2000s on view in the Seoul show.

"By creating shaped paintings that took unusual, asymmetrical forms, Noland emphasized the objecthood of the painting," the gallery said.

This exhibition marks the first dedicated presentation of the abstractionist in Seoul since 1995 when he was featured at Gana Art Gallery.

Installation view of "Sam Gilliam: The Flow of Color" at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

After their promenade through the garden of Noland's shaped canvases, visitors ascend to the gallery's third floor, where Gilliam's radiant watercolors and "Drape paintings," produced between 2018 and 2022, seem to spill from the walls and the ceilings.

Though he was the first Black artist to represent the U.S. Pavilion at the 1972 Venice Biennale, Gilliam remained largely overlooked by the prestigious art world until his later years. And unlike many of his Black contemporaries during the Civil Rights Movement, his work remained resolutely abstract, eschewing overt political commentaries — a stance that sparked debate within the community.

Yet his pieces were audacious in their own right.

It was in the late 1960s when the artist first liberated his pigment-stained fabrics entirely from wooden frames and suspended them from ceilings in sinuous curves. His now-canonical drape paintings thus transformed flat rectangular canvases into free-flowing, curtain-like installations.

"The year 1968 was one of revelation and determination," he once said. "Something was in the air, and it was in that spirit that I did the drape paintings."

Installation view of "Sam Gilliam: The Flow of Color" at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

His relentless experimentation with colors and materiality also birthed luminous watercolor abstractions on Japanese washi paper. He soaked the paper in different pigments — somewhat reminiscent of tie-dye — before folding and distressing them. The resulting creases and pleats gave the flat surface a striking sense of three-dimensionality.

"Through this medium, he came to understand color and form as physical, textural presences that reach beyond painting's two-dimensional surface," Pace Gallery noted.

Both "Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1966-2006" and "Sam Gilliam: The Flow of Color" run through March 29 at the Seoul gallery.