Urban Myths Melting Out Of Reality
[Review]PARK Yuna [The Planarian Realm] (JUL 30-AUG 12,Kwanhoon Gallery)2008-08-18 오후 1:52:11
[Lee SunYoung _ Art Critic]
Park Yuna’s works portray our daily lives in such a way that various aspects of such lives stream out of the corners of his paintings. With the colors spread throughout the painting, they appear as though plastic objects have been melted into them. Atypical patterns that inject an extraordinary energy into the repetitive, ordinary daily lives appear in every object, including human beings, beyond any imaginable borders. Consider objects that have definite outlines: the cumulus-like patterns in Park’s work blend these objects by melting those outlines, giving the work an almost dream-like appearance. However, Park’s works are far from a portrayal of fictitious objects, or a fantasy that is removed from any sense of reality or objectivity. Rather, his works draw on an energy that is latent in objective reality, because the atypical patterns consist of colors from various objects. These patterns unyieldingly stretch the definite outlines of the objects, and create entirely new images. Park gives a simple object countless layers and characteristics.
There is no abstract painting in which the atypical pattern invades the entire canvas; rather, we see the step before and after the artistic transformation, coexisting on the same canvas. This dichotomy makes such a painting even more dramatic. Park points to the soap bubbles he played with as a child and the planarians he studied in science class as the origin of his patterns. In his notes, Park writes “when my small room was observed through a soap bubble, with its rainbow prism, a new space was created.” A planarian is a flat, almost two-dimensional organism that can proliferate by itself, and therefore, it has the potential to continuously experiment in the three-dimensional space of daily lives. At the same time, Park’s works partly recover a basic dimension that reenacts the three-dimensional world on the two-dimensional flat canvas. Park creates a new dimension of limiting reality by combining the bright specular surface of soap bubbles and the image of indefinite proliferation.
In Park’s works, the backgrounds are mostly common places, such as rooms or offices. However, these common places cause a series of chemical reactions when they are combined with the human beings resting or working within those places, which leave unusual traces. In the midst of everyday objects, computer screens become the major point from which the atypical patterns begin. They are metaphorical objects, out of which things are ceaselessly pouring. Park’s work [Fatigue] consists of a whirlpool that embraces the entire object in the painting; a whirlpool that begins from the computer screen. In another work, titled [In a Row], people in room that could be an Internet café or an office make contact with their computers while sitting in a row. Computer screens, coffee, people’s hands, and keyboards are all connected together. The painting portrays a solipsistic world, in which people are seated close to each other, but because they are preoccupied with their own computers, communication between them is completely non-existent.
Just as with the electronic devices that we use today such as computers, cell phones, or MP3 players, individuals establish connections with one another that have little to do with physical “closeness.” New objects create a fantasy, in which we come to believe that we can escape from the now. In [Fatigue Man], a man is lying down with his shoes on, and it is difficult to distinguish whether he is a laborer or someone who is homeless. In this painting, an atypical pattern is falling down like a waterfall from a lamp located above the man’s head. The dream-like atmosphere embracing the sleeping man erases the context of daily life. The atypical patterns shown in many of Park’s works are created by connecting people and objects, or people and the environment. [Office] is a painting that depicts a modern office, made of glass, and most of the people in the office are connected to computers. Random patterns bleeding out of computer screens, bookcases, paintings, and trash cans leave odd traces in a planned, mechanical space.
However, there are no such traces in a dark, empty office. Accordingly, these atypical patterns are related to a core that cannot be transformed into a simple object. They relate to traces left by reactions of the core to fantasy, unconsciousness, and the body. Sometimes, even the objects are portrayed in an unrealistic light: indoor scenery seen through a fish-eye lens is an example of this. [Stir] creates a rapid flow by mixing various colors that exist indoors through a fish-eye lens. In this painting, an unverifiable force is stirring reality. [Suck the earth in]’s distorted space has a form that resembles soap bubbles. The pattern streaming out of the center embraces the entire space. Patterns go beyond framework established for the boundaries of “painting.” In a wall painting displayed in the form of a performance on the third floor of an art gallery, the patterns erupt out of the painting. Sometimes, the patterns swirl within, without going beyond the outlines of the objects themselves.
These de-objectified objects appear like doorways to another world. The planarian patterns created by Park bring simple, lifeless objects to life, so that these objects are given other meanings beyond ordinary sense. In this sense, the objects may have their own scent, or sounds. Ordinary scenes transform into unfamiliar sounds and shapes. Reality stretches, filters through, and melts into another reality through endless refraction. Although such ordinary scenes appear to be without order, they are filled with symbolized objects and are a mere repetition of a mechanical process. These scenes may be full of meaning, or completely empty. Park’s expression in his paintings takes the meaning of ordinary objects to another level, beyond the familiar. These atypical patterns in Park’s works disintegrate and break the established forms and meanings, refusing to provide us with a clear understanding.
Everyday life consists of societal myths rather than the obvious. The natural effects created by an artificial and symbolic world changes our everyday life into a myth. Park alienates such daily myths. The sophisticated and solid appearance of Park’s works transform ordinary meanings into different set of values. As Roland Barthes states in [Modern Myths], art increases the arbitrary nature of symbols, and loosens the relation between symbols and their meanings to the extreme. Vague “concepts” are maximized in art works. Formalized structures are destroyed, and their remains create new meanings. However, this trend is not limited to art. Objects reflecting daily myths also evolve by themselves before being transformed through an artists’ vision.
This is because new objects are coming to possess diverse forms of meaning and function, beyond their original use and symbol. Like art itself, today’s new technologies also narrow the gap between objects and their image. Once ordinary objects become the subject of contact and use, they undergo a process of becoming the core of a set of values. Park’s paintings portray this process, which Park achieves by connecting the objects with atypical patterns. The body of an object becomes the core of a physical and a spiritual experiment, and goes through endless communications and exchanges with its surroundings. Park’s planarian patterns become a complex passage that serves as a connection between subject and object. The ordinary objects surrounding human beings are extensions of our bodies, a fact that in itself has a magical and alchemistic power. A new relationship between subjects and objects is created when they are fiercely mixed, in a zone where there is no distinction between them.
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