Untitled, 2003-2009
Untitled, Tenseless and A voyage Series(2003-2009)
Hyung-Geun Park (from artist’s statement)
I was lost.
Like always pollutants completely filling up my head, I had to go there to clean off. Escaping from the crowded city and its shade fading away my sights, I face formless seduction of trembling leaves. Trees are old and the forest is deep. Right at the moment when absolute solitude mutes even birds’ quiet chirpings, without hesitant I open the curtain to the forest.
Once, when bread of life and customs from god was exhausted and finally people became indifferent, “they” hid themselves, one by one, to the other world out the door. Recognizing “them” was quite accidental. Day and night meets twice daily, however, in this time of usual transition, grandiose universe and my miniscule existence is meaningless. The one time, that I swiftly released myself, actually arose from an illusion like a fiction. I was walking in the dreamy picture that day. The sun did not set yet and the moon was more than glimmering. Stars were twinkling on the pond and houses were gleaming without lights led. This occasional experience is somewhat untruthful. It is too lively and realistic.
This place is especially unusual today. It is bizarre and uncomfortable. Leaving behind momentous hesitance, I step my foot following sudden curiosity and nervousness. Soon I am spaced out and become blind. It is a usual phenomenon every time I come to this place. Because estimation and decision is impossible here, I have to use my animalistic tentacles to sense. Not listening and looking perhaps would be better. Then, I can meet with myself that is looking at me. It surely is a place I had been before. Whisper from breeze, trembling twigs, and seduction of endless green marsh; layered traces of old world make what I see become nothing. Peeling the layers of traces is difficult like getting out of labyrinth only depending on a compass.
It is very hard to photograph this place because you can see more when you stop looking and thinking. It might be easier at the time when we were very younger. The most difficult journey has begun after so long a time. We start to see and give meanings to unknown things, then, we return to that “unknown” world.
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Chaotic Harmony: Contemporary Korea Photography
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, US
Santa Babara Museum of Art, US
- Anne W.Tucker
Though a member of the younger generation, Hyung-geun Park shares with his predecessors his connection between inner and outer worlds in his work, or as he expressed, “This photographic space is obviously a place in an actual world, reflecting my inner world.”[i] He continued later in the interview, “These photographic images demonstrate the relations between my physical performance and objects. They appear as a protagonist in the picture, replacing myself. They are beings not existent in reality, but represent my being more truly with their crystallized presence achieved by being taken.” Similar to Byung-Hun Min, Park disregards the specifically of what and where he has photographed. It does not matter where he found the slightly misshapen ball floating in green scum. Writing about his picture Tenseless #5, Swamp (2004) (plate TK), art historian Ian Jeffrey acknowledged, “In the normal course of events one would imagine that the ball was reclaimable, but you also know that if you were to make the effort you would soon sink out of sight in the bottomless morass disguised by the algae. You pass quickly, that is to say, from a technical difficulty into a reflection on mortality and the life ever after . . . Park’s is a world of epiphanies and of emanations rather than of phenomena and of immediate objects of perception.”[ii] The other photographs in the series Tenseless are equally disconcerting and provocative (fig. 3). They can be described, but not easily understood. One is not quite sure if one is seeing a stage set or a life-size structure, an industrial accident or naturally occurring organisms, or real or stuffed birds. His pictures are ambiguous narratives that simultaneously seduce and disturb.
Park Hyunggeun
[Education]
2005 Goldsmiths College (MA Image & Communication) , University of London, UK
2004 Goldsmiths College (PgDip Fine Art), University of London, UK
2002 Gwang ju University (BA, MA Fine Art photography) Gwang ju, S.Korea
[Solo Exhibitions]
2011 Forbidden Forest, Insa Art Center, Seoul,Korea
2008 Imaginary Journey, Gallery Zandari , Seoul, Korea
2006 Hyung-geun Park – Solo Exhibition, Kumho Museum of Art – Seoul, Korea
Hyung-geun Park – Solo Exhibition, The New Art Gallery Walsall – UK
2001 The Second Paradise, Obs Gallery , Gwang ju, Korea
1999 Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Sa jin ma dang Gallery, Seoul, Korea
[Group Exhibitions]
2011 Performance by onlookers, Seoul Arts Center,Seoul
Moments unfolded, Shin se gae art wall gallery,Seoul
2010 Spectrum in Asia: Multicentralism, Dae-gu Photo Biennale, Daegu
Chaotic Harmony: Contemporary Korean Photography
Santa Babara Museum of Art, US
Ideal Beauty and Images, Ilmin Musuem of Art, Seoul
Maden Pictures, Arario Gallery, Chunan
Images don’t speak: Ventriloquism of Images”, Interalia, Seoul
2009 Views from Korea, Lianzhou International Photo Festival 2009, Lianzhou, China
Chaotic Harmony: Contemporary Korean Photography,
- the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, US
Serotonin, SeMA Gyeomghuigung of Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul
Jeju Art: Yesterday and Today – Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju
Korea Special Exhibition – The 8th China Photographic Art Festival &
2009 Dali international Photography Exhibition, Yunnan, China
The photography as Contemporary Art, Doosan Art center, Seoul
Urban & Culture, Jeonju Photo Festival 2009, Jeonju
Multiscape – 3.15 Art Center, Masan, Korea
Intro, National Goyang Art Studio, Goyang
2008 Humanscape, Seoul International Photography Festival 2008,
- Ancient Seoul Station, Seoul
Inevitable Cloud, Yang pyeong Eco Art Festival, 2008, Yang pyeong
Image-nature, Dae-gu Photo Biennale2008, MJ Gallery, Daegu
Mirror image: About a Self Portrait, Seoul Museum of Art. Seoul
Sight on site, Aram Art Gallery, Go yang
Photo on Photograph, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul,
Mindful Garden, Shin se gae Art Hall, Seoul
New acquisitions-collection reconstructed,
- Gyeonggido Museum of Art. An san
New frontier, Gallery Now, Seoul
2007 The Blur, Mook Gallery of Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
Switch off, switch on -Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul
Identity, ear your self, martin-Martini Art Internazionale, Turin, Italy
Abandoned Protocol, Ritter/Zamet, London, UK
Duo-Se-Duo-Gan, Landscapes in five different colors,- Gallery Zandari, Seoul
Life! Samtoh, Samtoh Gallery, Seoul
The Quartet of Photography, Eugene Gallery, Seoul
Photography, Janus face, TOUCH ART, Heyri Art valley,- Gyeonggi-Do, Korea
Contemporary Korean Photography Spectrum – Landscape, Trunk Gallery, Seoul
Bitmap 2007, International Digital Photo Project – Gallery Loop, Seoul
Up- and-Comers , Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul
No-bounds, Sun Contemporary, Seoul
2006 Friends of Kumho, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul
Contemporary Korean Photography-Korean New Days, The 16th Bratislava
Month of Photography, 2006 FOTOFO, Slovakia
Da saek Da gam, Gallery Zandary, Seoul
Arts in Photography, Photography in Arts – Dae gu Photo Biennale 2006,
Dae gu, Korea
Relation-Isolation, Photography Now- Gallery Now, Seoul, Korea
The Earth-Artist responding to Violence, the 11th International Biennial of
Photography and Photo-related Art. FOTOFEST 2006 – Houston, USA
Bitmap, International Digital Photo Project –Alternative space Loop, Seoul,
Korea -Plus Gallery, Japan
2005 Winter wonderland: Fantasy and illusion, the Fotografie
Forum International, Frankfurt, Germany
Landscape, the 5th Photo Festival Views & Visions – Gana Art Centre, Seoul, Korea
in visibility, Oxo Tower Barge House, London, UK
The Contemporary Tales – Ear to Wall, Martini Art Internazionale,
Parco Culturale Le serre, Turin, Italy
2004 MA & Pgdip show, Goldsmiths College, London, UK
2002 Photography, Unmasked Identity, – Lux Gallery, Seoul
- Alternative space Pool, Korea
Paradise among Us, Flow: New Tendencies in Korean Art, The Korean
Culture & Arts Foundation, Seoul , Ulsan Metropolitan Museum, Jun Ju Sori
Museum, Korea
2001 To be a Photographers’ Life 7, 1019Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Analyze a Snake – Gwang ju Mertopolitan Museum, Gwang ju. Korea
2000 Difference & Unfamiliarity, 2000, – Lotte Gallery, Gwang ju. Korea
- Goto Gallery, Dae gu.
1999 To be a Photographers’ Life 5, Sa jin ma dang Gallery, Seoul, Korea
The boundary of photography, Nam do Art Hall., Gwang ju. Korea
[Awards]
2010 The 9th Daum Prize Winner, Geonhi Art Foundation, Seoul, Korea
2009 Nominated for Pictet Prize 2009, UK, Swiss
2006 Selected as an Young Artist, Kumho Museum of Art, Korea
Grants from Art Council Korea.
Supports from British Art Council. UK
2005 Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2005 short list, UK
[Collections]
Ernst & Young, London
Martini Arte Internazionale, Turin, Italy
The Fotografie Forum International, Frankfurt, Germany
Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul
Gyeonggido Museum of Art. Ansan
Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul
Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA
[List]