HwaSeeHwaDam “Seokshin Park”

Able Fine Art NY Gallery

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Able Fine Art NY Gallery presents “HwaSeeHwaDam/畵詩畵談 (Images, poems, and words),” a solo exhibition of the artist Seokshin Park. The exhibition will consist of Seokshin Park’s contemporary treatment of traditional Korean mediums with his most recent body of work. Every single piece of Park will be the viewers’ path to artist Seockshin Park’s philosophy on life. With his witty words which become poems and also part of images, Park will share his keen insights in the human beings and their relationship with their surroundings.

Seokshin Park, born in Korea, studied at Mokwon University for both his BFA and MFA. Park has exhibited his works mostly in Korea throughout numerous group and solo exhibitions over 200 times. Most of his major exhibitions including Landscape of Earth (2014, 2015), Permeating and Spreading (2009), and Looking at the Sky (1997) are held in Daejeon, where he started his creative art and his cultural space “Parking”. As he stated, “It can be successful when the artists can play together. That’s the most important in order to blow up the culture and art here,” He is not just an artist but also an activist who is full of ambition to create, educate and share the art with public in the local area and young emerging artists lack of space and resource. When he is not painting, he shares his expertise with his students at Mokwon University, where he received his artistic training. In addition, he is a recipient of numerous renowned awards including the Minister of Health and Welfare Award.

The title of Park’s exhibition, “HwaSeeHwaDam,” is originally referring to the Chinese character畵詩畵談which means images, words, and poems/stories; this perfectly captures his unique artworks where the words, poems, and images which mingle and tangle together and eventually become one piece. The medium and foundation of his painting originate from the Korean pictorial poem, which is one of the most traditional paintings that used to be practiced by aristocrats to express and share their knowledge. However, Park’s painting is very freewheeling and too familiar compares to traditional pictorial poems. As seen in the piece Tang, the figures in his piece are often naked and very straightforward; various, almost acrobatic, gestures and pose with their exaggerated facial expression show the true self of human beings in a humorous manner without any make-up. He terms his style “Human Graphie,” a wordplay on calligraphy, the decorative handwriting style. However, Park goes a step beyond merely decorative arts. Every piece of Park’s art depicts his keen insights into each fragment of human emotion; the parts of us we love and hate but eventually should embrace as part of us.

Park calls himself a “Japnom”; a person who does everything, a man who cannot be defined as one because there are many layers of sentiments piled up in himself. Indeed, Park has lots of different occupations; he is an artist, an educator, a director of an art and cultural space, and a host of a TV program. He talks to people, teaches people, studies people, and finally paints people. By painting his subjects, he sees what he truly learns about them and enters the lives of his human subjects. As his renderings reveal humans in the raw, the viewers are allowed to look at themselves and their surrounding through his figures.

Able Fine Art NY Gallery has a long history of introducing exceptional emerging and established international artists to the New York audience. By recognizing young talents that retain and embrace traditions yet express them through original and exciting voices, Able Fine Art NY Gallery seeks to create a bridge between times and cultures.