Lot 1568: PARK SU HYUNG

PARK SU HYUNG
(B. 1983)
Pyramid;& Sea
Sea: signed in Korean; titled and inscribed 'Sea; oil on canvas; 130 x 130 cm.' in English (on the reverse)
ink on Korean paper; oil on canvas
145 x 76.5 cm (57 x 30 1/8 in); 130 x 130 cm (51 1/8 x 51 1/8 in.)
Painted in 2009 (2)

Seoul, Korea, Gallery Sejul, 8th Funny Funny, 17 July-14 August, 2009

Apprehensive of the insecurity of contemporary society and the inexhaustible struggle within the monotony of everyday life, the color and content laden works of Park Su Hyung are penned in fluid twirls, interwoven with extremely intricate compositions and multiple reproductions of visual motifs that expressively collide and overlap to mimic the droning wave of everyday convergence and conflicts of mass society inflected by the constant growth of industrial and technological modernization.

Both the title Sea & Pyramid (Lot 1568) contribute to the delicate complexity on the sociological pretentiousness of the collective society in overcoming their quotidian life, further conveyed the dim colored masses of blue and black. The everyday salary men are in unsteady cooperation of a pyramid, weakly contoured by the liquidity and monochromatic trait of an ink to materialistically parallel the bleak corporate structure that they reintegrate and systematically support, only to brutally confront their prosaic future of a faceless individual. Continuing to contemplate the issues of excessive conformity of reality in pictorial confinement, Park vaguely rendered the figures to deliberately lack a structural focal point, and instead, meshed them in dynamic arrangement of uncontrollable compositional abstraction to yield a sense of their individual unimportance in Sea. Such social pendulum is mimicked in his aesthetic pendulum between the Futurist's advocacy in speed and technology with Wassily Kandinsky's deep spiritually driven composition and remark on the symbolism of color. As he collides the two ingeniously into his own by adopting the optical vibrancy and movement constructed by the multiplication of its motifs, overall beckons a sense of sullen blue of individuals who has lost their identity within the sea of regularity. The figures ascend floating aimlessly, but are essentially pressed in spatial suffocation, perhaps hassled to fit within the cube of the given norm. Park's vivacious painterly gesticulation and color convene an aura of intriguing intensity, depth and moving shapes; his precise objective to illustrate the ostensibly efficient, intriguing, modernized world we live in, thus, articulating a criticism on the enduring effects of undigested modernity that in contrary, has neutralized and customized our personalities into a mechanical fit, appearing physically homogeneous and harmonious, but only to consequently cause a deep isolation within every individual.