Exhibition Information

<PARK Gwangsoo: Nevermore > Installation view

<PARK Gwangsoo: Nevermore > Installation view

<PARK Gwangsoo: Nevermore > Installation view

<PARK Gwangsoo: Nevermore > Installation view

			While saying that “drawing is similar to go astray in the dark forest,” the artist added that “despite my concerted efforts to catch the object, it continues to move in vibration without revealing its clear identity to me.” If his drawings feel like “go[ing] astray in the dark forest,” it is because “[the object] continues to move in vibration,” not the other way around. […] Put differently, what precedes is not the forest and darkness; rather, a tree or the object as such disperses “in vibration” in a way indistinguishable from the forest and darkness. At stake is not so much the clearly delimited ‘lines of the forest’ as ‘the forest of lines,’ or ‘lines as forest’ which “continue to change their roles in vibration” without remaining as stable lines. […] figure for Park is always already in time, accompanied by the possibility of destruction or transformation. […] This ‘ambiguity’ indicates that the temporality Park’s drawings capture is far from linear and chronological, that it is ‘suspended’ at particular moments.

 

I came up with some core questions and one of them concerned colors. As ‘Nevermore,’ the title of this new exhibition- while clearly referencing Edgar Allan Poe’s – strongly suggests, it is safe to say that Park’s works have revolved around black (and white) only. […] His recent, speculative engagement with British painter Cecily Brown seems to be incorporated into these attempts to overcome this difficulty, if not the dead-end. For Brown’s characteristic acts of reinterpreting canons of Western art history through her rough and colorful brushstrokes without clear outlines, betray amusing resonances with Park’s works that collapse and bend ‘figure-and-ground’ distinction. No one knows if they would serve as an effective probe in the horizon of another passage and overlaps Park’s subsequent works might explore down the road. There is no need to worry, though- if the artist in question turns out to be Park Gwangsoo, one who saw forking forests in one line, and has groped and charted blind paths better than anybody else.

 

Excerpt from Drawing After ‘Figure and Ground’ (or William Kentridge): 

Adventures of Park Gwangsoo and Transformation of Drawing in Digital Age 

Yung Bin Kwak (Art Critic / Cinematic Arts Ph.D)