GaHee Park Unsettles Still Life Traditions with Surreal, Soured Temptations — Colossal



Art

#food
#GaHee Park
#painting
#still life
#surreal

In a quick e mail change about her work, GaHee Park references freedom a number of occasions. The Seoul-born, Montréal-based artist needs to liberate herself from realism and infuse her work with the expressive, simplified qualities of abstraction, creating decadent scenes with recurring motifs like eyes and fish. “I like to consider each topic of my work, together with animals and human figures, as a part of a nonetheless life. That offers me extra freedom to make pictures,” she shares.

Working in flat planes of oil on linen, Park envisions surreal tablescapes and moments of intimacy gone awry, and he or she begins each bit with a preliminary sketch. “Generally I maintain these drawings for a couple of years in a drawer till my confidence within the picture grows, and I’m able to make it a portray,” she says. “I usually use some pictures or motifs from earlier work so I can play with acquainted varieties extra freely, exploring variations to go deeper into these topics.”

Park usually returns to flesh, whether or not it’s on the human physique, fruit, or fish. Showing seductive but spoiled by hordes of ants or incongruous emotions, the extra carnal features of her works mirror on the pains and pleasures of being alive on the earth. In items like “Drowned Thought” and “Ready with the Fishes,” eyes float in glasses stuffed with colourful liquids, “reflecting completely different feelings and states of consciousness,” she says. The motif “might be to freeze a specific second or present a number of moments or states of thoughts on the identical time.”

Fish have a extra private function for the artist. “My grandmother bought recent fish in a market in Korea, and I’ve all the time hung out with (useless) fish and seafood. Observing them from a younger age most likely makes me wish to paint them,” she says. “There’s one thing acquainted about them for me, however additionally they nonetheless appear very alien.”

Park will open her subsequent solo present, Enjoyable and Video games, on February 24 at Perrotin in New York and presently has a bit on view in 50 Work on the Milwaukee Art Museum. Observe her work on Instagram.

“Three Faces and a Shadow” (2021), oil on canvas, 52 x 48 inches. Picture by Tanguy Beurdeley

“Cat with a View” (2022), oil on canvas, 60 x 80 inches. Picture by Marion Paquette

“Ready with the Fishes” (2023), oil on linen, 25 x 24 inches. Picture by Paul Litherland

“Half Asleep Evening” (2022), oil on canvas, 34 x 41 inches. Picture by Elad Sarig. Picture courtesy of the artist and Nassima Landau

“Contact I” (2022), oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches. Picture by Paul Litherland

“Seafood Dream” (2020), oil on canvas, 24 x 25 inches. Picture by Guillaume Ziccarelli

“Contact II” (2022), oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches. Picture by Paul Litherland

“Nonetheless Life with Slugs” (2022), oil on canvas, 38 x 32 inches. Picture by Marion Paquette

#food
#GaHee Park
#painting
#still life
#surreal

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