Scene and colors  bare handmade in mind

                                                                                     Kim Jong Keun (art critic)

   Always  picture is not executed with formative factor and theory just like a dot, line, plane and color etc. ... Because it is born as a picture when meets the inside of the artist beyond the thing being formative.  In this point, the importance of mental world in art that Kandinsky reasoned from abstract picture comes into effect.  This necessity does not have its exceptions in case of landscape painter, too.  Park Hee Sook is applicable to this case.  Of course it matters if her painting is a landscape or not.  But strictly speaking, it is not.  She does not express  the object as it was, and moreover her eyes do not look toward the formality of landscape.  Even so, she is not an abstractionist building up ideological world. She looks the object and understands it.  And she transfers the afterimage of memories to screen.  In her way to see nature, the flow and technique of her own exist.  This the very technique to incorporate the scene in mind.

   In general, there is visual scene that we can see, otherwise there is inner scene in mind that we can not see.   The painting of Park Hee Sook belongs to the latter.  For that example, she avoid concrete description of landscape.  This suggests that artist is not attached to the impression or reality, and that is the general form of artists.

This form is found in the whole works of  Park Hee Sook.  For example, the work that reminds the image of rainy day and snowy day, the shape of incandescent pink flower, or an ice ridge well trimmed.  That resembles the image of calm nature, and makes remind of a moment of violent wind of winter.  But that does not ignore the substance like a absolute music.  In " Summer Tree" or " Spring" or " Sea of lovers", she shows the sense of four season.  And that sense is confirmed by actual several characters.  She does not paint the object of nature as it was, but spread and disseminate all over the screen.  And she concentrates her attention on a specified theme keeping four season in mind fundamentally.  The theme, for instance, is motive from nature just like water, snow, light and flower.  She wants to see through colors of object being seen.  the picture to be spread with pink flowers all over the screen as a spring melody, snowy purple mountain reminds of wintertime, the sky blue reminds of blue sky of summer, yellow golden bell make dazzled the afternoon of springtime.  These are her representative works in harmony of her eye and subject and theme.  This  palpitating pictures is fantastic as if she see nature through colored filter in various colors.  Nevertheless, she displays a property of color dot and unity and expresses free form  in all directions.  

   Light blue works gives us a boundless sense of space and sense os freedom, pink color shows the power of a assembly of gigantic flowers.  All these idea of Park Hee Sook are coherent with the opinion of Cézanne, that is " We  should not obey nature too scrupulously, too sincerely".  For that reason, in her picture controlled colors and hot and clear sentiment exist together.  This is her discriminate charm to others on the point that she recognizes a landscape for colors than sentiment her own.  The beautiful thing is not her color but her landscape.  Although the landscape has an antinomic color, but has perfection in expression of her own color.  Now her style is getting settled down in rough and flat structure as a combination of abstract pictures and expression.  And she regards landscape as a pulled down form and adapts her own form bare handmade beyond representation of nature.  Uncommonly through her hand, the basic tool, she reveals inner world of the artist utterly.  This formula means that she denies the indirect touch of medium.  At the same time, this is not quite different from body language of action painters that he developed the effect of flexibility into new an aesthetic sense.  We must not overlook that she is a sculptor, too.  Perhaps she sculptures colors on plane.

   Now she is in the world of her hand own of expression of her personality.  Also the arrival is new beginning.  She has her own language by exhibiting intense form with free and rhythmical line and limited colors.  Including simplicity of monotone picture with improvised and rapid touch and self-confidence but instant effect, she amplifies the effect of simple colors.  So, I think that it needed to endow to her picture dense expression and cohesive power.  In order to do that, she need to have aesthetics of moderation showing her own idea intensively.  Then she can obtain her own horizon with rough and bold matière not development of wornout abstract picture.

    She graduated university of fine art long time ago and  was a teacher.  It is  too late to have her first exhibition this time.  But she kept her word that she will have her solo exhibition when she  execute more works than 100.   Only for this, her start is enough brilliant.  Evidently her first solo exhibition is symbolic action of her supreme freedom and happiness.

                                                  2005.03

Dana Park- Intricacies of Vision

One of the great strengths of Korean contemporary art in general, and Dana Park’s paintings in particular, is the technical skill with which the image is brought into play on the canvas. But if it sometimes happens that the artist goes too far and emphasizes skill to the point where it excludes a conceptual underpinning, it is also true that craft can meet an idea in ways that enhance the painter’s imagery. This is the case in Park’s work, which presents complex images of landscape, in many ways the most august category of traditional Korean art. The problem, of course, is making the tradition new again, in a way that pushes the legacy of landscape painting every so slightly forward. How does an artist improve on more than a thousand years of historical art? The question is not rhetorical for the Asian painter, who must answer by developing a difference that both adheres to and transcends the past. In Park’s art, we find a slightly stylized treatment of ascending rock and snow at high altitudes, which enables her to describe her personal vision and treat an ancient theme contemporarily. One of the strengths found in working as a painter now has to do with the impressively individual styles artists have worked out; Park belongs to this group, and adjusts her painting to reflect her own values.

As a result of Park’s independence, one can see how artistic vision can sway the viewer through a combination of technical skill and original style. As an artist, Park makes work that dazzles the eye, repeating and overlapping brushstrokes until the surface of the canvas is enmeshed in visionary complexity. Angular and intricate, the mountainous imagery makes itself felt in colors such as mauve, blue, and green; the contrast between the overall image of the high altitude stone and the sharply original hues that the brushstrokes are made up of provide Park’s audience with a nearly mythic presentation of subject matter. The nobility of the landscape tradition makes itself felt in her stylized treatment of stone; this heritage enables her to build her own vision in the company of accomplishments that sustain a new treatment of the ancient theme. Park thus insists upon a conversation between herself and the past, whereby her experience in nature is given passionate expression. The key to her success lies in her independent treatment of form, which she adheres to despite the long history of painting that supports and sustains her art.

This attitude is clear from the start in Park’s paintings. In one purple landscape, mists and clouds compete with high stone peaks; it is almost as if we are at the end of the world. The effect of her craft is nearly supernatural; vague cloud forms merge with sharp angles of rock. Park claims that this is done out of the imagination, in a way that emphasizes personal idiosyncrasy above all else. A slight feeling of eccentricity seems to me inevitable in the creation of the Asian landscape, which offers artists so many different ways of representation. Park’s innovations belong to a tradition of sharply insightful painting that aims at evoking a particular, and singular, point of view. Its truth to nature is almost an afterthought, in the sense that Park is communicating her truth more than she is depicting the reality of what she sees. The stony outcrops found in this composition serve to intensify the audience’s relations with the painting, not least because Park sees in them a remarkable affinity with the archetypal truths of nature. So if the painting is imagined, and if its origins are found in cultural treatments of nature rather than in nature itself, it becomes obvious that the work is the product of both heart and mind.

A green painting, also vertical like the purple one, occupies similar territory. Here, though, Park takes even greater chances than in the purple work. The background looks like a snow-bound ascent, in front of which we find abstract delineations that might be crystalline structures, each of which is different in the same way the every snowflake reveals a different delineation of form. The overall effect is very exciting and more than a little unusual; as a result, we see just how carefully Park has put to use her fertile imagination, envisioning a northern landscape that is highly original—indeed, as original as nature itself. The painting must be seen in light of Park’s sequence of similar works; their correspondences highlight and intensify our experience in nature, which is for all intents and purposes both figurative and abstract, as well as being imagined culturally, so that we are comfortable keying into the artist’s ability to shape original forms.

A smaller blue painting by Park offers its audience two vertical columns that look like abstract repetitions of snow on branches. The brushwork is wonderfully specific, even if what it presents inevitably remains enigmatic, mysterious. In the front is a white passage, presumably snow; we remember that Park’s outlook is generally involved with the weather and natural forms of the north. Like most of her paintings, this composition is unusual in its dense mixture of abstraction and reality.

 Park enjoys the moment when realism gives way to abstraction, or when the reverse happens in her painting. The point where the two categories of seeing meet is the potent subtext of her art. In the future, her viewers may well come to expect more of her effective merging of differences, although it may prove impossible to see both abstraction and figuration in the same instant of time. This of course is neither the fault of Park nor that of her audience; our inability to see both kinds of imagery in the same moment results from the limitations of sight itself. Clearly, Park has put herself in a place that uses the boundaries of sight to create compelling paintings, which offer her audience perspectives visible both here in the world and beyond ordinarily seen phenomena. Her imagination demands no less.

- 2014.12 Jonathan Goodman

SCENERY AND COLORS OF HEARTS BY BARE-HANDS

Kim, Chong Geun, Art Critic

Park, Hui Sook looks a object in the right and understands it. Then it is moved into her afterimage on a canvas. In her way to see nature, the unique flow and technique through her way exist. This is the very technique to incorporate the scene in mind. Basically, she does not paint objects of nature just way they are but disseminate images with pulling them or spread all them on the whole surface of canvas. These palpitating paintings are fantastic as if she sees nature through the eyes with various colored-filters. Nevertheless, she shows not only unification of color-dots but also liberal style as much in all directions as reminding us the all over painting. Especially, there are controlled colors as well as hot and clear feeling in her paintings. In the viewpoint of her recognizing landscape as color, she has unusual attraction distinguished with other artists rather than she is falling in a unique sentiment. Why her colors are beautiful is not pigment but its own beauty of landscape created by her. Even though its color is antinomic, expression of color pursued by her is given perfection. Now her style is getting settled down in rough and uniform structure as a combination of abstract and expressionism. Her own language is acquired by showing intense form driven from free and rhythmical line as enough as just limited colors. In conclusion, she amplifies dramatically an effect of simple colors with including even the specificity of monotone painting through not instant effect but extempore and rapid touch of hers and her confidence. 

2009.08

2014.12     죠나단 굿맨 평론중에서

박 작가는 리얼리즘에서 추상으로 가거나 혹은 반대 상황이 그녀의 작품에 일어나는 순간을 즐긴다. ‘어디에 시각의 두 가지 범주를 둘 것인가?’ 그녀 작품 세계의 강력한 서브텍스트이다. 추상과 현실이 만나는 그 지점이 그녀 작품의 잠재된 특징이다. 앞으로 그녀의 관객들은 그녀가 더 효과적으로 다른 기법들을 합하여 모색하는 것을 바랄 것이다. 비록, 추상과 비유가 동시에 존재하는 것이 불가능할지라도 말이다. 물론, 불가능함은 박작가의 잘못 또는 관객의 잘못이 아니다; 이것은 우리가 가진 시야의 한계로 추상과 비유의 이미지화를 동시에 보지 못하기 때문이다. 확실한 것은 박작가가 훌륭한 작품을 만들기 위해 시각의 경계들을 넘나드는 자기만의 세계를 정립하고자 하며, 이는 세상과 일반적으로 보이는 현상 너머에 있는 모두를 볼 수 있는 관점을 관객에게 제공하는 것이다. 그녀의 상상력은  우리에게 이를 보여준다. 박 작가의 상상력은 막힘이 없다.                                 

  Park enjoys the moment when realism gives way to abstraction, or when the reverse happens in her painting. The point where the two categories of seeing meet is the potent subtext of her art. In the future, her viewers may well come to expect more of her effective merging of differences, although it may prove impossible to see both abstraction and figuration in the same instant of time. This of course is neither the fault of Park nor that of her audience; our inability to see both kinds of imagery in the same moment results from the limitations of sight itself. Clearly, Park has put herself in a place that uses the boundaries of sight to create compelling paintings, which offer her audience perspectives visible both here in the world and beyond ordinarily seen phenomena. Her imagination demands no less.

2014.12 Jonathan Goodman