Seoul Botanic Park presents Kiwon Park’s solo exhibition 《Dialogue》 in 2022. This exhibition was conceived as an attempt by the artist to experience plant culture in diverse ways. Park has built an original artistic practice that departs from object-oriented works, instead focusing on the “place and spatiality” in which the exhibition is staged.

For this exhibition, Park unveils his new work Dialogue, interpreting the site-specificity of Seoul Botanic Park. Inspired by visitors walking over fallen leaves in the garden, the work leads viewers to step on and walk across an accumulation of imaginary leaves within the exhibition hall (Plant Culture Center Project Hall 2). As viewers walk over the piece—constructed from materials such as bronze and new pine wood—they become aware of their own movements and the sounds produced, engaging in a wordless dialogue with themselves. The work proposes a new form of exhibition experience and offers a special moment in which audiences can imagine their own plant culture within Seoul Botanic Park.

At the Magok Cultural Center, Park also presents works from his ‘Width’ series of hanji paintings, which invite reflection on the four seasons and the cycles of nature. Using hanji, a natural material free from artificiality, the series is composed of flows of colors easily found in nature—green, blue, and brown. They visualize Park’s key concepts of “place and spatiality” and “emptiness and circularity” through painting. In these works, specific spatial situations are divided into planes, each filled by countless repeated lines in different directions. The overlapping accumulation of lines recalls the passage of time, the cycles of nature, and the seasons.

Park explains, “My work is a dialogue with empty space.” His practice captures the history and atmosphere unique to the exhibition site, encouraging viewers to walk slowly, savor the space, and feel at ease while experiencing the work. Completed only through the movements of the audience, his works suggest that space and spectatorship form the final component. Through this exhibition, visitors are invited to explore the various corners of Seoul Botanic Park, imagine their own sense of place and plant culture, and, ultimately, enter into dialogue with their inner selves.

References

• 《대화》(Dialogue)