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Seung-soon PARK

Seung-soon PARK, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art

Birth

1954, Seoul

Genre

Painting, Installation

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The Space of City_curated by Lee Ji Min
Artist
Seung-soon PARK
Museum
Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art

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There are houses, and each house is connected with another house. Using her own technique, Seung-soon Park colorfully reveals spaces inside and in between her houses; these spaces, in turn, symbolize the spaces of a city, which can be interpreted as representing more than merely a medium of her utopia. These spaces, for instance, may connote the artist's own independent space?the space in which she lives at present. Within the virtual space of the exhibition one encounters two-dimensional works presenting houses in repetition and interior spaces, sofas, and curtains, as well as three-dimensional installation works in which miniatures of city dwellers are formally arranged in harmony, allowing visitors to imagine that they are in a space configured for Park alone. These works tell a story that imparts a rhythmic feeling while keeping visitors engaged all the while. The space of a city to which the artist refers is a space inhabited by Park and also a space for ordinary people who are living in the modern age. As mentioned in her artist's statement, Park wanted to interpret the futility or illusions of city dwellers of the present day as they go about their hectic daily routines by presenting them in a beautiful and positive light rather than a dark one. This exhibition, ‘The Space of City’, allows viewers to project these diverse stories about the urban dwellers of contemporary times onto their own lives. Park is expected to continue working this series for some years yet, incorporating additional themes such as housing, food, and clothing. The virtual exhibition ‘The Space of the City’ will enable all of us, everywhere throughout the world, to share similar spaces through the works of Seung-soon Park.

Urban spaces, stories of ordinary people

Contemporary art has been modified and evaluated in the border between abstraction and representation. These two genres follow current trend and spread in various ways, and the distinction between these two genres becomes more and more vague. Seung-soon Park’s” Urban-Story” series provides restful time and spaces to everyone who is stuck in the middle seeking a new direction.
The subjects of “Urban space- Stories” series cover from giant buildings, residential spaces, coexisting nature, and human beings. The artist stimulates excitement by juxtaposing two contrasting factors of the space, such as detailed and the fourth dimensional, or sometimes realistic and unrealistic characteristics.
The artist’s philosophical depth delivers in color tones, the flow of lines, and the texture of the surface of the paintings because Seung-soon Park establishes his own pictorial genre and unique techniques rather than expresses the boundary between the abstraction and the concreteness. Escaping from using just flat canvases, he seeks for new methods such as placing straightened and curved wood panels on the canvas to constitute flat surface and relief at the same time, various approaches in multi-dimensional spaces, and installation using already existing sculptures.
The artist tries to approach the audiences who are not familiar with pictorial art or feel divergence from artistic world with the combination of his basic canvas works and the maximum application of small spaces, objects, and architectural elements instead of expressing gigantic spaces in urban area. He also involves the symbolic meaning that the human beings and other various objects coexist in a gigantic city itself. The artist’s hopeful message that the people who are trapped in the framework and live like machines can be inspired by diverse experiences in the spaces he created arouse my sympathy.
Straight and curved lines in loud colors follow in their own rules, and increase some tensions. The surface of the objects that represent urban spaces is expressed simply and implicatively. Even the afterimage of the endless repetition of brushstrokes can be traced from the quality and thickness of the wood on a canvas, fabric surfaces, and pigment trails.
The desire of the artists is providing a new understanding that stimulates the transition to a dynamic image from a static image to modern people who constantly pursue a vision and a new direction by the appropriate blend of sensuous and relief aspects. This is probably what he wants to show in “Urban-story” exhibition.
Urban spaces refer the places that the artist is living in, and also the living spaces of contemporary ordinary people. The artist intends to interpret the futility or illusions of modern people’s daily city life in a positive way. This exhibition would be a chance to reflect your own story in the stories of contemporary modern people.
I am looking forward to have a further chance to enjoy another series of that would be filled with stories of “food,” “clothing,” and “shelter” in Seung-soon Park’s own style.
 

Jimin Lee, Chief curator, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art

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