Matthew Conradt

Woodgrain is Not Made of Wood - Figurative Midwest Photo Transfer on Mylar

2011

Keun Young Park depicts the body in a state of transformation. Her works on paper show floating figures, faces, draped arms and cupped hands, which appear to be disintegrating and re...

Keun Young Park depicts the body in a state of transformation. Her works on paper show floating figures, faces, draped arms and cupped hands, which appear to be disintegrating and reforming at once. The artist begins her process with original photographs keyed to various evocative hues. The images are shredded by hand into thousands of tiny pieces that are then reassembled. Between the pasted pieces are thin, white, vein-like lines that reveal the texture of the paper's edge. Park's practice has a relationship to the precision of Pointillism, the uniformity of Benday dots and the repetition of digital pixilation but her works retain a tactile, hand-made quality through the irregularly shaped elements from which they are formed. "I intend to reflect upon the a-static character of existence in the flow of time…I attempt to capture the tremor of unstable presence," writes Park. Each work vibrates with a quiet energy, conjuring up thoughts of both the beginning of life and its end. This sense of disembodiment is balanced with a fullness of form and physicality that is derived from the artist's earlier practice as a sculptor. ------------ "In my work, I reflect upon the ecstatic character of existence in the flow of time as well as the opposite sides of nature – negative and positive, construction and destruction, presence and absence, and life and death. I believe that everything is constantly changing, either being generated or destroyed. Presence is just a state of being and the reality of an object has ambiguity in this shifting. In my recent work, the micro-collage or paper mosaic, I capture the tremor of unstable presence. I take pictures of parts of the body or face, change the color and saturation of those images by Photoshop and print them out on paper. Then, I tear the pictures and paste them back together piece-by-piece. Through this process of breaking down photo images and recomposing them, figures have thousands of tiny particles and textures that make the images look blurry and tremulous." Bio Keun Young Park was born in 1977 and educated in Seoul, South Korea. She received BFA and MFA Degree in Sculpture at Seoul National University. Since 2005, Keun Young has lived and worked in New York and New Jersey. She was selected as an A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship Recipient, a winner of Curator’s Choice, a competition of ATOA, ‘Artist Talk on Art’ organization and she received Juror’s award at ‘Small Works’, international competition of NYU gallery. Keun Young had numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries and art fairs in the United States, Europe and Asia. Item Description: Keun Young Park Breath in...