Kui Soon Park

“Art does not imitate nature, it imitates a creation, sometimes to propose an alternative world, sometimes simply to amplify, to confirm, to make social the brief hope offered by nature”
-- John Berger, ‘The White Bird’

For her exhibition at Gallery Mutare, Berlin-based artist Kui Soon Park presents a new body of paintings and drawings hat thoughtfully explore our understanding and perception of nature.

Through this examination, both psychological and technical, her concepts and techniques allow us to enter into new environs and augment our understanding of place and atmosphere, intensifying the manner in which we engage with the subject while simultaneously recognizing the evocative and emotional qualities inherent in her practice. In these works, an amalgamation of both abstracted forms and representational imagery combine to provide a unified whole, offering an idiosyncratic view of particular surroundings. In the positioning of these formal elements, Park creates tension between foreground and background, at once cultivating both flatness and a decisive sense of depth.  

These often-gestural brush strokes appear to be both considered and spontaneous, providing the work with a sense of natural movement, alluding to the natural occurrences present in the landscape and the feelings that these actions provide when we are in isolated nature ourselves.These measured changes in color, tone and texture can also impart the work with a sense of anxiety, movement, anticipation, and transition.

As such, Park highlights the range of emotions she considers when making these works, and how these translate and connect with the viewer. The artists states: “When I am standing in nature, I can feel its power. If I am in a garden or by a lake, I have feelings of peace and great comfort. At the same time, if I am near a cliff, a mountain, or a dark forest—closer to wild nature—I can also feel fear or anxiety.
These are the almost endless emotions and positions that can exist that I want the work to convey.”  
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While the imagery within the works may be generated from tangible locations, Park’s paintings and drawings have the ability to become more universal in their characteristics, leaving us with a greater sense of ambiguity, as if she is thinking of the power of nature writ large versus referencing anything inherently specific.  This highlights Park’s practice in general, offering the viewer a unique perspective into the understanding and interpretation of nature, and the possibility of emotions that arise through the thoughtful consideration of these works.

Text - Kris Douglas

Exhibition
20. August – 19. September 2021
Wed- Fri 14:00 - 19:00  Sa. 11:00 - 15:00
Galerie mutare
Giesebrechtstraße 12 .
10629 Berlin
‍www.galeriemutare.de