Works resemble their artists. Much like babies take after their parents. Kiwon Park, who avoids giving direct answers to any question. His works sit quietly, like their master, like a background. Even at 《Continuity》, his first solo exhibition in three years held at 313 Art Project Seongbuk Space, the artist shone the spotlight not on the works themselves but on the space. Curiously, the works came into sharper focus, and in the “Red Room” on the second floor of the gallery, one’s steps lingered for a long while.

I remember him. To be precise, I remember his yellow and orange room. Kiwon Park is an artist who won the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Artist of the Year award in 2010. The following year, the MMCA gathered 23 past recipients of the award in an exhibition titled 《Stories of 23 Artists of the Year 1995–2010》, giving him a space. In a room surrounded on all sides by white walls, Park installed thin vinyl curtains in an “ㄱ”-shape and placed yellow and orange lighting behind them.

The lights filtered through the crinkling layers of vinyl, producing ethereal, dreamlike colors. Unlike the other 22 artists’ spaces, Park’s room was filled with mystery. Viewers mistook the strange light for natural sunlight filtering through a hidden window, rather than LED lighting. Curious, they peeked behind the vinyl curtains to confirm, which Park found intriguing. This work, titled Falling 2, which made viewers contemplate the distance between reality and illusion, became a crucial starting point in concretizing Park’s “Park-style space” practice.

Majoring in Western painting at Chungbuk National University and winning the Grand Prize at the 13th JoongAng Fine Arts Prize in 1990, Park quickly rose as a promising young artist. In 1991, he held his first solo exhibition at Yoon Gallery, beginning his career as a full-time artist. Today his works focus on the keyword of “space,” but his early works had little to do with the site-specific character of his current practice. “Until the mid-1990s, I made simple, minimal object-like three-dimensional works using materials such as wood and photographic prints. Although I majored in painting and still paint, I was interested in three-dimensional forms from the very beginning. I was fascinated with combining different materials like wood, paper, and photographs. Around 1996, I became seriously interested in space. I found myself captivated by walls in particular—empty walls with nothing hung on them, where I thought I saw some sort of movement. I think that’s when it started. I began considering how to realize walls within exhibition spaces.”

The first medium he used in his exploration of walls was jade-colored FRP (fiber reinforced plastic, polyester resin mixed with reinforcing fibers), which also appears in the outdoor installation Disappear Entrance presented in this solo exhibition. FRP boards were first used in his 1996 exhibition at Gah-in Gallery. He stood FRP boards upright like wallpaper and titled the work Movement. This work became the ignition point for his concept of creating works that did not harm the pure character of space, allowing viewers to discover anew that spaces and objects (artworks) could display perfect neutrality together.

The translucent jade boards even made it to the Venice Biennale. Selected as one of 15 Korean Pavilion artists at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Park wrapped the entire façade of the pavilion with translucent jade FRP boards, once again displaying his attachment to the medium. At the time, curator Sunjung Kim—now President of the Gwangju Biennale—applied the concept of “borrowed scenery,” naturally drawing external landscapes into the interior. Park staged the pavilion, clad in jade boards against the Venetian backdrop, as a kind of sculptural object, and foreign press praised it. “After covering the outer walls with FRP boards, I extended them into the interior to create a flow. The exhibition was with young artists like Choi Jeong-hwa, Jeon Yongseok, and Moon Seong-sik. We all sought to utilize the Korean Pavilion space to showcase intriguing facets of Korean contemporary art. Looking back 14 years later, I think each artist presented their work with strong individuality.”

As in the 2011 MMCA exhibition 《Stories of 23 Artists of the Year 1995–2010》, Park’s works featuring colored vinyl curtains fluttering like drapes also appear in many large-scale exhibitions. These works trace back to his Volume installation at Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Photography in 1997, which used colorless transparent vinyl. “I think the appearance of the space where the work is installed is as important as the work itself. For that reason, the work must not damage the given space. I wanted to realize the space with minimal form. I wondered what medium would best achieve this, and I thought of thin, transparent vinyl.”

From the exhibition at DDP in 2015, to the 30th Anniversary Special Exhibition 《The Moon is Waxing, Waning, and Eclipsed》 at the MMCA Gwacheon in 2016, to the solo exhibition 《Growing Space》 at 313 Art Project, the 2018 OCI Museum of Art exhibition 《And Said Nothing》, and now Red Room at 《Continuity》. Park’s colored vinyl works illuminated by LED lighting have become his signature series, demonstrating the perfect coexistence of work and space.

Among these, the work many remember is Sunshine, presented at 《Esprit Dior》 at DDP. In this exhibition, which featured six representative Korean artists including Do Ho Suh, Lee Bul, and Kim Heyryun, Park created a dreamy installation of pink and red vinyl illuminated by LED lights, combined with his ‘Width’ series hanji paintings, to evoke Christian Dior’s world of charming colors. “Four years have passed, but I still feel a deep satisfaction when I think of that exhibition. Dior’s Paris headquarters directly handled the show, and I felt the process was very sophisticated. Their consideration for artists to focus on their work was impressive. The six artists’ works came together harmoniously thanks to the curator’s ability.” Dior’s keyword for him was “from pink to red.” With all shades of pink cascading like a waterfall against the tall ceilings of DDP, the work rustled and danced as visitors passed by, offering audiences another chance to reflect on the vital interplay between contemporary art and space.

Park’s relationship with Parisians, which he recalled as “sophisticated,” continued the following year in 2016. He had the opportunity to install a 10-meter steel structure titled Flash Wall, expressing wishes for peace and reunification, on the façade of the Grand Palais during Art Paris. Made of interwoven wires flanking the entrance to the Grand Palais, the work carried a message of solace for the scars of terror in Paris and of peace. His bold gesture, adorning the entrance of the Grand Palais—a venue for exhibitions by artists like Anish Kapoor, Christian Boltanski, and Daniel Buren—was quietly but widely shared through art journalism and the social media of visiting tourists.

As anyone who has experienced Park’s exhibitions can easily imagine, most of his works are site-specific. Unlike artists who rely on steady labor grounded in daily routine, Park’s process of hurried preparation begins only once an exhibition is confirmed. One wonders about his everyday life. “Even though I do space works, on days without installation schedules, I like to take my time painting. Especially on hanji. I also spend my days making small sketches or noting down new materials or methods. Once an exhibition space is set, I consider the nature of the site and refer to past sketches or notes.”

The 《Continuity》 exhibition held at 313 Art Project, located in a residential alley in Seongbuk-dong, is a reflection of such ongoing musings. The pyramid-shaped black sponge floor filling the first-floor gallery was an idea he had long been interested in. Wishing to create a piece that would let visitors feel as though resting in a grassy field, he cut black sponge into finger-length pyramids and spread them across the entire floor. Visitors changed into slippers or wore only socks at the entrance and experienced new tactile sensations by stepping on the spongy pyramids. Standing, walking, and sometimes sitting on the floor, they observed one another and discovered new landscapes shaped by space. “I always hope my works appear like backgrounds. So when I work, I keep in mind situations where works and people are intermingled. Rather than the cliché of ‘a work hanging on a wall with a spectator standing before it arms crossed,’ I think about how both works and viewers can become protagonists together.”

Considering the gallery’s unusual circulation—retaining the structure of an old Seongbuk-dong house rather than a pristine white cube—Park devised diverse spatial arrangements. “The overall circulation here is unique, especially the long distance from the gallery gate to the exhibition space. I wanted the first piece viewers encountered upon opening the gate to give a hint about what would unfold inside. So I installed Disappear Entrance, covering the passage from the gate to the main building entrance with jade-colored FRP boards.”

After passing the staircase with jade boards, visitors enter the first-floor gallery, encountering the soft sponge installation and X Mobile. X Mobile is a reinterpretation of his large-scale taping work X, previously shown at Jeju Museum of Art, Cheongju Museum of Art, Gallery SoSo, and the Buk-Seoul Museum of Art. Through the symbol of X, representing nothingness, he sought to express space in a state of zero. “Moving through the gate entrance, the first floor, and then the second floor, I wanted each space to offer a different experience so the exhibition would feel like a lively and enjoyable journey. I believed X Mobile would serve that role. Unlike typical mobiles, which are finished in perfect form, X Mobile is not. It consists of irregularly clumped yellow packing tape printed with black diagonal lines. I’d call it ‘the most futile mobile in the world.’”

The journey Park prepared concludes in the second-floor gallery, the “Red Room” filled with hot air. The work Red Room, composed of red vinyl and LED lights, faces a blue-hued painting across from it, gazing back at the viewers. In this way, his works within space ultimately end with a quiet, faint full stop.

Expanding on fundamental themes through diverse materials and installation processes, Park has infused his practice with temporality and theatricality. By placing the viewer’s position at the center of his works, he sees the very experience of audiences within specific time-spaces as completing the artwork itself. In this moment, as we walk through the Red Room, we ourselves become the work.

References

• [리뷰] 박기원의 붉은 방
  [Review] Kiwon Park’s Red Room)