Unhee Park "Visitor"
Chelsea West Gallery
This event has ended.
Chelsea West Gallery presents an exhibition of photographs and video by Unhee Park that explore the relationship between paintings in museums and the museum visitor. The exhibition opens on February 17th, with a reception from 6-8pm, and continues through February 28th.
The art viewer is also a consumer, and museums cultivate their audience of cultural consumers to keep the numbers flowing. But what do we really know about them and their reactions Art audiences consume in silence, or discreetly share what they feel with the person they are with. In her video and photography work, Unhee Park breaks that "fourth wall" of discretion between presentation and audience in a matter-of-fact way, as a reporter asking direct questions about the viewer's projections onto the content of representational paintings. Park allows the "silent" art consumer to have a personal and individual voice, as she interviews museumgoers about the aspects of the paintings they identify with. Park's project juxtaposes the viewer's physical and psychological reality with the artificial content of the work of art, sometimes creating an amusing disconnect, or at other times, a startling parallel between art and life. Park's style of investigation asks how art serves as a mirror and suggests why it's invaluable to a culture.
Unhee Park grew up in Korea and studied Glass Art and Art Therapy before moving to New York to study photography at the International Center of Photography, where she finished an intensive one-year program in 2010. Her deadpan comedy approach to the role of media reporter has a hint of absurdity, as her naive persona allows her to ask blunt and personal questions. In other video works centered around the museum, she has followed subjects back to their hometowns in the Midwest, and interviewed them in the context of their personal lives. Park's museum interviews conducted in New York City then become portholes into life in the heartland. Her perspective as a foreigner allows her to take nothing for granted, and her sense of the absurd mixes with genuine curiosity to create a fresh reading on social reality in contemporary America.
Media
Schedule
from February 17, 2011 to February 28, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-02-17 from 18:00 to 20:00