Please begin by explaining Names of Colors, the work that presents punched-out chad fragments from paper paint swatches along with their color names.

It was probably around 1997. I had just finished my undergraduate studies and was transitioning into graduate school. I went to Home Depot in the U.S. to look for materials, and I saw that paint companies like Benjamin Moore had displayed rows of color samples stretching over 10 meters. They were made for customers to take freely. Each color sample was about letter size, so you can imagine how many there were.

As I looked through them trying to decide which paint to buy, I noticed that the color names were completely different from those used by paint brands for artists. There were all kinds of flamboyant adjectives and nouns. Some didn’t even have clear color names. For example, names like “American Dream” or “Delaware Gap” were not referring to a specific color but rather suggested the atmosphere a space would evoke when painted in that color.

 
I also found those color names almost poetic.

I felt the same way. So I started collecting them little by little over several days. I thought it would look suspicious if I took too many at once. I even went to different Home Depot locations each day so it wouldn’t seem strange, and I only collected samples from one brand at a time. After collecting them all, I sorted them according to nine basic colors as I perceived them. For instance, “American Dream,” which I mentioned earlier, is a slightly cloudy sky-blue tone, so I placed it in the “blue” box. It was like a game—sorting color cards into nine boxes—but the process involved subjective decisions.

Some cards even had “yellow” in their name, but if they looked closer to white to me, I placed them in the white box. The work Names of Colors currently exhibited at Atelier Hermès presents those sorted color cards, punched into chad fragments, along with the names of the paints. While preparing for this exhibition, I had a conversation with Artistic Director An Soyeon of Atelier Hermès, and she asked me, “Where is that work now?” In fact, the original Names of Colors made in 1997 was damaged in a flood. However, the letter-sized color swatches sorted by box were still intact, so I was able to recreate it. Since they are letter-sized, I could probably make about eight more editions.

 
The series that extends from the 1997 work is the ''Color Collecting'' series, which encompasses both the current and earlier works.

The first Orange Painting in 2003 began when a gallerist asked me, “Do you have an orange painting?” That question became the starting point of the work. I decided to investigate what exactly constitutes the color called “orange.” You could say it developed from the methodology used in Names of Colors in 1997. I collected all acrylic paints available on the market labeled “orange,” organized them alphabetically by brand and paint name, and applied them as horizontal stripes about 3 cm thick. I also determined the height of the painting based on the ceiling height of luxury apartments for upper-middle-class residents in Gangnam, and set the width to match that of a two-seater sofa.

 
In 2004, you expanded the methodology of Orange Painting into nine colors, developing it into Nine Colors and Furniture, and 19 years later, in 2023, you presented the exhibition 《Nine Colors & Nine Furniture》 based on the same methodology. This is the only continuous series in your practice. What differences are there between the 2004 and 2023 works?

At the time, the paintings were based on the standard apartment ceiling height of 230 cm and were completed with a vertical dimension of 227 cm. The average thickness of each color band was about 2 cm. This time, I found that the ceiling height of luxury apartments has increased by more than 30 cm. Furniture has also become larger and more high-end, although not drastically in size. Beds and TV cabinets have grown slightly, but since they are closely related to human body dimensions, they cannot expand exponentially.

In 2004, the total number of paints available across the nine color groups was 632, but when I gathered them again for this project, the number had increased to 1,134. Because of this, the width of the color bands changed. Compared to the increased size of the canvas, the number of paints grew more rapidly, so the average width of each color band became narrower, around 1.5 cm (more precisely between 1.13 cm and 2.18 cm).

 
There’s something almost geological about your methodology, as if you are extracting a cross-section of strata with a massive core drill.

I find it interesting to think scientifically about how what we experience in reality is structured along axes of space and time. When there is a social phenomenon, I consider what would happen if I cut through this spatiotemporal axis in my own zigzag manner and transformed it into a flat form. It’s also fascinating to show the differences between planes created at different times using the same methodology. In fact, methodology is the most important aspect of this work. Anyone could reproduce it next year or the year after simply by following the method I described. In that sense, I often feel that I am creating equations.

Then wouldn’t it be possible to hire around 100 assistants?

Yes, I’d like to do that too. But I can’t really afford to pay someone three million won per month. Sometimes I even find myself wondering, “Why am I doing this?” After all, this isn’t a type of work where brushwork is the key element.

 
It seems like you are erasing the artist Park Meena from the work.

I’ve been like that since my school days. In critique classes, I was often put in situations where I had to explain what is subjective and what is objective. I thought deeply about why I kept being placed in that position, and I realized that I’m less interested in what I see and feel, and more interested in what we see—what our average or median perception is. That’s why this work is about finding the totality of paints we use in 2023, not the colors I personally like.

 
So you are also eliminating chance.

But chance can never be completely eliminated. Even though I’ve established a methodology, situations always arise where I have to make choices within that system.

 
For example?

Let’s say I go to Hangaram Art Store and Homi Art Store, the largest art supply shops in Seoul, to collect paints. I researched the entire database of acrylic paints available in Korea and printed out lists of what could be purchased at each store. While cross-checking the list with what’s actually available versus discontinued, I discovered that Speedball also makes acrylic paints.

Originally, Speedball is known for printmaking inks. It turns out that their acrylic paints were briefly imported but are no longer available. However, they hadn’t completely disappeared from the market—there were exactly three left in a discount corner. Then I had to decide whether to include them as part of the 2023 acrylic paint set. Since they were already discontinued and only remained in the discount section, if I had gone a day or two later, I would have completely missed them.

 
So they are residues of time.

In the end, I decided to include them. Returning to the earlier point about subjectivity and objectivity, this becomes a moment that raises questions about the subtle nature of human choice.

 
Recently, I interviewed an artist who said that the artist should function like a mathematical function, so that their presence does not appear in the work. It reminded me of your methodology. They cited General Grant’s autobiography, which describes war without a single adjective. I responded by saying, “All prose is fiction. As long as there is choice, nonfiction cannot exist.”

General Grant’s example often comes up in art criticism classes. That’s probably why that artist mentioned it. My work is also like that—in terms of writing, it has no adjectives. I find adjectives very difficult. But adverbs are fine.

 
Within a single color, there are numerous bands, and among them you pair a piece of furniture. How do you decide that color? For example, in 2023-Yellow-Wardrobe, how do you choose the line color of the wardrobe?

First, I select the median value from Golden, the company that first produced acrylic paints. For yellow, there are names like Cadmium Yellow Light, Cadmium Yellow Medium, and Cadmium Yellow Dark. Among them, I choose what I consider the middle value—Cadmium Yellow Medium.
 

What is the most urgent change happening in the world of acrylic paint today?

To explain how the number of colors has increased, cadmium is a good example. Cadmium is a chemical pigment used in paints like yellow and red, but it’s very harmful to health. So nowadays, “cadmium-free” paints like Cadmium-Free Yellow Light and Cadmium-Free Yellow Medium are being produced. They don’t contain cadmium but are designed to resemble its color. These didn’t exist in 2004.

 
Like gluten-free noodles that perfectly mimic the texture of traditional noodles.

Exactly. In 2023, cadmium-free paints are almost completely replacing cadmium paints, and it even seems like the label “cadmium-free” itself might disappear. There are many connections here between art history and sociology.

 
Vladimir Nabokov once compared painting and narrative arts, saying that while a painting can be perceived all at once before moving into details, a text must be read sequentially over time. That suggests painting is an art form with less intervention from time and memory.

There was an artist, Barnett Newman, who experimented precisely with how time is experienced in viewing. He created massive works over two meters tall and instructed that they be displayed in narrow corridors, so viewers couldn’t step back to see the whole image. Even though viewing the entire work without stepping back doesn’t take long, walking alongside something larger than your body was a new experience. This was a major turning point in art history, leading to the expansion of time and movement in art, and eventually to installation art. In my case, however, I think I went in the opposite direction. I discussed this with Director An Soyeon.

 
So that’s why Director An used phrases like “containing space” and “transforming into installation.” That’s fascinating. It reminds me of an idea—combining hundreds of bass drum samples mathematically into a single waveform and fixing that waveform as a line on a flat surface. Like slicing a cross-section of sound.

Yes, that’s right. When I was an undergraduate, I kept thinking about similar ideas. One work involved walking and, every 100 steps, holding a transparent acetate sheet at arm’s length and drawing exactly what I saw. I brought those drawings back to the studio, divided them into a grid, mathematically averaged the colors and lines, and created a painting from that. It’s quite similar. That’s how my thoughts flow.

 
In your interview with Director An in the catalogue, you mentioned Rembrandt’s earth tones and Titian’s ultramarine blue as important examples in the history of paint.

There’s a reason I mentioned those. In Rembrandt’s time, everything in paintings appeared in earthy tones because pigments were originally derived from soil. That’s why many paints were named after the regions they came from—like Yellow Burnt Sienna or Burnt Umber. “Burnt” refers to whether the earth was heated or not—there’s Raw Sienna and Burnt Sienna. Then came blue pigments, which are rare in nature.

Ultramarine was made by grinding lapis lazuli, a mineral still found only in Afghanistan. When Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, this pigment was more expensive than gold. It was even used in contracts. One of the reasons Impressionism emerged was that ultramarine began to be chemically synthesized and mass-produced in France, lowering its cost, and that paint started being stored in tubes, making it portable. Artists could finally go outside to paint.

 
Were there other changes you noticed while collecting 1,134 acrylic paints?

I think there are about four major changes. First, as mentioned earlier, cadmium-free paints have become dominant, and the term itself may disappear. Second is the application quality of “hue” paints. Back in 2004, when I was teaching, we told students not to use paints labeled “hue.” It was obvious—people compared it to banana-flavored milk.

If you want a banana, you don’t drink banana milk. But technology has surpassed that limitation. Now, in some cases, hue paints perform better than the originals. For example, Cerulean Blue—its pigment is unstable, so Cerulean Blue Hue often applies better and has superior quality.

 
That reminds me of chemically reconstructed whiskey.

Another change is the rise of pearlescent pigments. In the past, iridescent pigments were still experimental. Only a few companies, like Pebeo, developed them. Now they’ve stabilized, and almost every company produces them. Lastly, I believe we are approaching an era of custom-made paints.

Like the color charts we saw earlier, paint colors are currently fixed. But technology is advancing to the point where, like a Photoshop gradient, you can select a coordinate among tens of thousands of options and have that exact color produced. It hasn’t reached Korea yet, but Golden is already doing this. Eventually, color names may disappear, replaced by numerical coordinates.

 
Even then, wouldn’t there still be other factors like viscosity or texture?

Those can also be selected. You can choose matte or varnish finishes as well.

 
Thinking about whiskey again, similar reductionist shifts seem to be happening across fields. Your work could be interpreted in that way.

That’s why I told Director An that I might not be able to do this work again. If color names disappear, the work itself becomes impossible. Among my various bodies of work, this is the only one I’ve continued across time as a series. I felt this might be the last opportunity, so I wanted to mark the coordinates between the work from 19 years ago and the work today.

References

• [칼럼] 박미나는 왜 1000개가 넘는 물감을 모았을까?
  [Column] Why Did Park Meena Collect More Than 1,000 Paints?