Vernissage: January 13th, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m
Duration: January 14th to February 17th, 2023
Freedom is not a matter of course for people and nature.
It is fragile, vulnerable and valuable and needs constant protection and care to survive. And this is exactly where an ambiguity emerges: protection also means keeping away from the natural environment. That is, it takes an artificiality to maintain naturalness—there is inevitably a coexistence.
In her work, Kejoo Park focuses on this field of tension between naturalness and artificiality, between the source of life and artificial conditions.
For Park, the hard shell and the soft core that it protects are not opposites, they exist in parallel.
This interface becomes clear in the exhibition theme “The Inside of the Outside”. A rough, well-fortified exterior forms a contrast to the fragile interior, but it is nevertheless indispensable.
Park tries to make this duality visible and to raise awareness of this coexistence.
Man-made rough and hard materials such as concrete and steel are juxtaposed with vibrant colours, valuable or fragile materials such as gold or paper. It builds relationships between the elements to be protected and the protective shell. And this does not happen without looking into the future. Nature and freedom as elementary pillars that we cherish like a precious treasure. Kejoo Park conveys this hope in her exhibition – symbolically manifested – along the way.
Born and raised in South Korea, Kejoo Park went to New York to study painting and from there to Harvard, where she devoted herself to landscape architecture. It is these stations that outline the artist’s work, which is characterized by the contrasts between man and nature, interior and exterior, painting and object art.
