[CONTEMPORARY ISTANBUL 2020]A south korea ‘hanji’ artist park chul submit
virtual exhibition from Dec. 21 to Jan. 6, 2021, VIP preview from Dec. 19 to 21.
A traditional korean paper ‘hanji’ artist park chul, will present the ‘Ensemble’ series at the “CI, Contemporary Istanbul 2020(컨템퍼러리 이스탄불 아트페어 2020, 터키)” in Turkey.
The ‘Contemporary Istanbul 2020’ will be carried out through the virtual platform. The virtual exhibition runs from December 21 to January 6, 2021. VIP preview will run for three days from Dec. 19-21.
Korean paper artist Park Chul submitted his works through the AB Gallery(에이비갤러리).
Painting without Painting
Park Chul brings back memories through the rhythm created by touching and tapping on daily objects that are engraved with traces of life in the rural town in which he spent his childhood. Instead of painting with a soft brush, Park uses a hard brush to physically tap on objects to restore life to their expressions and breaths.
Nicknamed the “straw mat artist,” Park Chul finds, touches and taps on a variety of straw mats, molding and summoning the spirit of Korean tradition to the present time and space.
Revived through thousands of touches and taps, the energies floating around the objects saturate through the various traditional papers, especially hanji. The existence of these energies is laid bare across dozens of pieces of paper, unable to escape Park’s summons.
It was a passionate response to his reckless and stubborn call. His method is completely manual and embodies the very essence of “portrait of body, spirit, and sweat.” Park’s works may be regarded as simply making a rubbing of the outward form of an object, but, in fact, his working process is surprisingly difficult and complicated.
His works are suggestive of molding in sculpture, especially the casting process. In other words, his creations are not the result of direct molding of an object but rather a crystallization of the whole object’s body and spirit, as well as the perspiration and spirit of the artist, who cast various objects with cement and squeezed hanji into the impressions of the objects engraved inside the mold, before pressing, tapping and emptying the mold, which symbolizes the unification of subject and object as one.
While Park made limited use of acrylic paint in order to accentuate the colors and tones of hanji as his main medium, the foundation of his(朴哲,서양화가 박철,박철 작가,종이작가 박철,한지화가 박철) unique coloring stem from traditional dyeing techniques using natural dye.
△Park Tcheon-nahm(Seongnam Cultural Foundation Chief Curator)/박천남, 성남문화재단 전시기획부장.
△권동철=이코노믹리뷰 2020년 12월2일