Eunyoung Park – Ripples and Waves at Paris Koh Fine Arts
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By Jeanne Brasile
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Eunyoung Park’s paintings are like SparkNotes on the meaning of life. She merges the best of traditional Korean materials - natural inks on Mulberry paper – with contemporary approaches that emphasize gesture, mark-making, and physicality in a discovery of metaphysical topics on the nature of being. Park illuminates her ideas on spirituality, and the relationship between humans, natural phenomena, and the material world - depicted in primarily black and white paintings that range from four inches square to over six feet tall. The varying scales work to fruitful, yet differing, effects.
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One of the most compelling works in Park’s solo show is “Stand in Front of Emptiness,” a commanding painting on Mulberry paper that, at over six feet high, beckons from the far side of the gallery. Pinned loosely to the wall, the work undulates, giving it a volumetric presence. The work features a central white circle surrounded by a dense, black field. The void’s fuzzy edge reveals the individual lines that form the dense, dark background that yields to a central nothingness.
​​Stand in front of Emptiness, 2021, Ink on Korean paper, 52x78 in.
courtesy of Paris Koh FIne Arts
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The inky field is broken by a series of concentric ripples radiating from the void, which functions like a portal to another dimension or state of being. Park’s painstaking process, in which she applies the lines repetitively, speaks to the artist’s patience, but more broadly of patience as a spiritual virtue. The presence of the void in the context of transformation or transition further reinforces this spiritual narrative.
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The wave is a recurring motif in Park’s work and in “Refraction,” a large-scale portrait painting, she folds the paper to form wave patterns across its entire surface. The creased Mulberry paper lifts from the wall, heightening its dimensionality and that of the subject whose expression changes with the movement of the viewer. Looking more deeply at the surface of the work, delicate, overlapping lines form the contours of the subject’s facial features as well as the background. These lines resemble electrical wires or neural networks, which, along with waves, transfer energy across space and time. This energy is chi, the life-force that inhabits and connects all things, a source of inspiration for Park.
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​Refraction, 2024, Ink on Korean paper, 48×60 in.
Courtesy of Paris Koh Fine Arts
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The artist’s actions on paper echo the forces of ripples, waves, and life forces – as well as their capacities to change. Park engages with paper by folding, brushing and gestural mark-making to transform her materials - a metaphor for personal and spiritual transformation. By addressing transformation processually, materially, and narratively, Park embodies the totality of her subject. Through repetitive gestures, she applies delicate, overlapping ink lines to form dark, black backgrounds. Park repetitively folds paper to create literal wave patterns that transform the flat paper into wall sculptures. These mindful processes enhance the conceptual thrust of the work which is a compelling visual exploration of human experience in the material and spiritual worlds.
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A wall installation, “Emptiness Series,” features twenty-seven small paintings arranged in a grid. Each painting synthesizes Park’s thoughts on nature, transformation, energy, and spirituality. Though arranged aggregately to hold their own scale-wise against the larger drawings, these pieces are individually diminutive, forging an intimate relationship with viewers. The small scale encourages viewers to connect with both the infinite and the infinitesimal as Park illustrates plants, cells, waves, galactic bodies, and gaseous ejections. These pieces invite close inspection and are less foreboding than “Stand in Front of Emptiness” with its vertiginous, ominous presence. The “Emptiness Series” also incorporates small bursts of green and red - though black and white tones still dominate.
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​​Emptiness Series 1-27, 2024, Ink on Korean paper, 4x4 in each
Courtesy of Paris Koh FIne Arts
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Eunyoung Park’s solo exhibition is a feast for the eyes and tonic for the soul. Her exploration of empty space and how energy can arise from nothingness is a compelling philosophical topic. Park’s artistic choices to limit her palette while exploring materials and processes provide the anchor for the investigations of a curious artist in search of truth through observation, physical acts of transformation and representation. Each work is a fertile visual meditation of the structures and patterns in nature and the universe, and the interconnectedness of all things.
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Jeanne Brasile is currently the Director of the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree at Ramapo College of New Jersey with a concentration in art history and studio art, and a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies from Seton Hall University. She has taught graduate classes in museum studies and art history at the undergraduate level and is also an independent curator, artist and frequent lecturer on such topics as public art, curatorial practice and institutional critique. During her career of over 20 years, she has curated numerous shows throughout New York and New Jersey and worked at institutions such as Storm King Art Center, The South Street Seaport Museum and the Montclair State University Art Galleries. Philosophically, she sees the gallery as a place for asking questions rather than a framework for imposing meaning. She is most interested in developing exhibitions that challenge visitors to re-think their perceptions of art, art-making and the role of the museum/gallery.