lighting and telling - the gATEWAY TO THE HEART

 YOUNGSUN PARK august 1st -7th

Arusha gallery are delighted to present an exciting exhibition by artist Youngsun Park during the busy festival period in August. Park is a mixed media artist who creates picture books using still images, moving images, performance, sound and space. She has an MFA from Slade School of Fine Art, University College London and a PhD Degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. Park explains her thoughts and inspirations behind this exhibition;

'While our lives have become more convinient due to the progress in civilization that we enjoy in our contemporary lives, the desire to return to nature and nostalgia for our childhood dreams are still alive.

We have so far invested a significant amount of time to logically understand everything and realize everything into tangible results. While we feel that we are getting closer to the goal that we want by realizing tangible results through logic, our hearts still feel a sense of lacking.

We start to miss our childhood, a time when we may not have been as materially affluent as now but our imagination could take wing more freely. Though at first glance it looks like we have a lot, we have forgotten how to freely imagine things, which makes us wonder if we have forgotten how to see things with our heart. I would like to open the gateway to my heart, back to when I, as a child, would meet up with a bunny in my dreams and go on a trip with him. It's been a long time since that gateway to my heart has been closed shut, but I would like to reopen it and let my imagination take wing. This exhibit is a way for me to open that gateway and comunicate with another world.

This exhibit converts the story into light and story-telling languages to relay them in the exhibition space. Light, space and storytelling methods are brought into a form of collage, or are expressed through pictures and sculptures by making windows, or are shown through lighting installments. (My paintings are on Korean paper. Korean paper or hanji is the name of traditional handmade paper from Korea.) Some artworks made the boxes as the picture frame. I draw a picture inside and I cut out the image outside the box. The viewer can open the box as well. So a painting can be two artworks; when you open or close the box frames. The viewer comes into the exhibition space and is led to feel an emotional tug at their heart, as if they are inside a nursery rhyme from childhood.

 

 

 

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