Installation view ©Kwanwoo Park

《Strange Dream / Gold Cases》 presents a range of works including the artist Kwanwoo Park’s characteristic mode of “exclusive” experience—his unique approach to themes he has pursued for over a decade—as well as paintings and drawings that were not shown in previous exhibitions. Designed with a frame-like structure, this exhibition sets both The Reference’s building and the surrounding area as a stage for the works. It begins with 《Strange Dream / 》, which visitors can join by reservation, and is structured so that viewers can then enter the interior of the case in 《 / Gold Cases》.


Installation view ©Kwanwoo Park

Park has long been interested in the process of “identification” with regard to the world of the here and now and the entities that compose it. His work begins by refusing to reveal the human condition and self-consciousness—discernible only as “phenomena”—as fixed images or messages. Instead, he establishes conditions for generation and has attempted numerous experiments to translate them into a mode he calls a non-shareable “exclusive experience.” “The sense of consciousness and self-consciousness,” “the real and unreal mediated by belief,” and “questions situated at the boundary line” can be considered sub-categories within the world Park has built.


Installation view ©Kwanwoo Park

By devising devices to capture phenomena, staging scenes that evoke microscopic sensations, conducting group psychodramas in which the boundary between subject and object dissolves, and designing special experiences that can exist only through testimony, Park explores a liminal spacetime outside established classifications.

References