Between the Scene
Jienne Liu (National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea –Curator)
In her recent artworks entitled “Between the Scene,” Park, Sang-Mi presents a new trend of succinct juxtaposition of pictorial elements with visual modes. Totally unlike her former style in which she had been working on the images of forest which are densely filled with trees and vertical images that are assumed to reflect nature, Ms Park presents concretive pictures which strongly reveals the formative features. Myriads of vertical lines of various colors are hard to find; they are deconstructed into sparsely spread staccato lines.
Showing a series of her latest works, Ms Park concentrates on creating an image of the space not as the conventional subject matter but as the meaningful one to her. At a first glance, her canvass does not seem so complicated; however, the realistic and decorative drawings contain much more than are actually expressed. The scene in her canvass looks like a scene from our real world that the spectators are likely to feel a sense of déjà vu. Nevertheless, the reality of the scene has been rendered in the lightness of a poster. That is to say, the backdrop which is extracted from a three dimensional reality dubbed with two dimensional homogenous color, reinforces the structural order of the space on the canvass in spite of its seeming simplicity. The space and the objects there are regulated by various hues upon a flattened and smooth background. The smoothly flattened spatial expression makes a keen contrast with vegetable images drawn with intense and rough touch of brush in black ink.
What causes such a drastic change in her style? Ms Park confessed that she had had a feeling of being subjugated by her own way of dealing with shapes and colors because of stillness in her drawings. That is why she wants to grasp the feeling of a dynamic, strong and vital life force from within herself as an energetic artist. She wholeheartedly wants to express life force not by endlessly repetitive lines in a limited space but by having lines stretched out so that they even seem to spring out of the canvass.
Furthermore, she had been wondering about her environment and genuine identity; therefore, she eventually became eager to know where she exactly stood in the light of time and space. If we are able to encounter the inner self that has been hidden behind our quotidian life, it is not because we are being alone; rather it is because we are constantly connected with the other people and the world. The tenacious combination of the artist’s recognition of her surroundings and her longing to confirm the reality of her being an artist makes it possible for her to express her own clandestine space onto the canvass. Whether the space is real or not does not matter, because it varies any time according to the artist’s attitude of accepting her environment. The outer world is more than just a piece of scenery for sightseeing. It is recognized as the real space in which she breathes, moves, and lives. Because of this truth, Ms Park’s scenes consist of personal appreciation and images of both nature and scenery that are deeply rooted in her own memory and emotion. Even so, the dramatic pathos that might be encountered in everyday reality is hardly visible because it is expressed in the form of pictorial grammar.
As the artist’s environment, situations, objects and emotions are gradually revealed, Ms Park takes note of trees and plant images that connect herself to the world. Regarded as an extended image of nature, trees represent both nature and nature’s vitality for its growing and planting its roots deeply into the ground. The plants firmly rooted with the background of sentimental colors appear as vertical images with a metaphorical meaning of “I” who has to live in everyday life. In spite of different colors of the background, those are just metaphorical expressions of different spaces and situations. Ms Park seems wanting to correspond to the quotidian space as plants respire and grows in complete silence. In this respect, she makes an effort to grasp the feeling that may have been caused by her trivial belongings, especially those that can reveal her innermost spirit.
Ms Park dreams of a secret space of her own living space and everyday life. In this sense, “The Scene” showing her own unique reality creates another space as a two dimensional image. The artist’s dream is growing in her space even at this moment.