In a Submarine - K-ARTIST

In a Submarine

2019
Oil on paper 
120 x 150 cm
About The Work

Dasom Park has developed her practice by closely interweaving painterly methodology with an interest in the “body” as material—something subject to inevitable transformation. Her work undergoes a process of examining how the body, understood as a material concept, operates in reality, while also reflecting on the notion of loss embedded within it.
 
While Park’s work resonates with broader contemporary approaches to the body in painting, it distinguishes itself by reducing the body to material rather than amplifying emotional narrative or social symbolism. Aging, wrinkles, and inclination are not extended into tragic stories but reconstructed through physical conditions such as time and gravity. This orientation favors structure over excess emotion and condition over symbolic interpretation.
 
By adopting the very process through which matter responds and comes alive as her methodology, Dasom Park’s paintings move beyond serving as mere vessels for images; they become tactile devices akin to skin, transmitting sensation through contact. In identifying the human body with the body of painting, she forges a tender solidarity through—and alongside—material itself.
 
Her works thus no longer remain static entities fixed to the wall, but are encountered as flexible bodies and living matter.

Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Park has held solo exhibitions including 《Hanging Paintings》 (A-Lounge Contemporary, Seoul, 2025), 《Four Sheets》 (Vohm Gallery, Seoul, 2024), 《Romantic Maxima》 (Place MAK2, Seoul, 2024), 《Flat Fire》 (Gallery SP, Seoul, 2023), and 《Drive》 (Gallery2, Seoul, 2023).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Park has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Shifting Scenes》 (APOproject, Seoul, 2025), 《And Afterwards》 (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), 《The Original Face》 (Laheen Gallery, Seoul, 2024), 《THREE HOLES》 (EVERYART Gallery, Seoul, 2023), 《Random Pages》 (Gallery SP, Seoul, 2022), 《Where All Places Are》 (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2021), among others. 

Awards (Selected)

Park was selected as a Kumho Young Artist in 2022.

Residencies (Selected)

Park was a resident artist at the Kumho Art Studio (15th term) from 2019 to 2021.

Works of Art

Interest in the ‘Body’ and the Methodology of Painting

Originality & Identity

Dasom Park’s practice begins with an understanding of the “body” as material. Here, the body is not a fixed identity but an entity inevitably transformed by time, gravity, and environment. In works such as Between Trees(2018), In a Submarine(2019), and Dining Room(2020), the bodies of humans, objects, and insects are exchanged and intertwined, gradually losing their specificity. The body is no longer represented as a figure but reduced to inclines, curves, and masses. The surfaces from this period resemble dreamlike scenes, reflecting the artist’s attempt to approach fears of loss and aging indirectly—through the condition of “forgetting” inherent to dreams rather than through direct representation.
 
In observing the aging process of those she loves, Park has sought ways not to interpret bodily transformation as loss. As she notes in her artist statement, dreams are spaces where transformation and distortion do not demand punishment. This perspective extends into works such as A Narrow Place(2020), where she explores bodily transformation within enclosed spaces. The body leans, rests, and undergoes substitution, gradually losing autonomy; yet it never fully disappears. Instead, a condition persists in which deconstruction and generation coexist.
 
This line of thought was articulated through the concept of “inclination” in her first solo exhibition 《House of A Hunched Back》(Place MAK2, 2021). In these works, all figures and objects adopt an equally tilted state. This gesture attempts to erase the negative connotations attached to the hunched body of the elderly, reframing inclination as a universal condition. Bodily transformation becomes not a defect but a structural principle of the world. Inclination functions both as a device that dissolves hierarchy and as a metaphor for a nonlinear perception of reality.
 
In subsequent exhibitions, including 《The Art of Matter》(Kumho Museum of Art, 2022) and 《Drive》(Gallery2, 2023), Park’s focus shifts from emotion to cause. In Smoking(2022) and Bad Photo(2022), the curves of a roller coaster overlap with the form of a wrinkled body. Rather than centering sorrow or melancholy, the works foreground structural conditions—time and gravity. The body ceases to function as a mediator of emotion and instead becomes a surface inscribed by physical forces.

Style & Contents

For many years, Park’s paintings developed through the materiality of paper. Beginning with the act of tearing and concluding with the drawing of cracks, her process reveals an intention to entrust painting to the flow of material rather than to predetermined composition. Torn edges following the grain of paper, fissured surfaces, and accidental stains become integral to the image. Painting is approached not as a site of representation but as a record of matter responding and unfolding.
 
After 《Drive》, the physical conditions of gravity and time are formally embedded in her work. Curves are no longer merely shapes but trajectories of repeated vertical motion, structures analogous to wrinkles. During this period, the narrative of emotion recedes, and the paintings grow increasingly restrained. The body is no longer symbolic but approaches the status of a diagram revealing structural principles.
 
More recently, recognizing the limitations of paper, Park has expanded into the pliable materiality of fabric. In works such as Almost Squid(2024) and Romantic Animal(2024), the image no longer begins from a gessoed “white” ground but from the wrinkles, tape marks, and sagging of cloth attached to a wall. By tracing the folds and shadows of the fabric, the painting begins to resemble a living organism. The image is no longer separable from its support; support and image become inseparable.
 
This trajectory reaches a heightened stage in 《Hanging Paintings》(A-Lounge Contemporary, 2025). The canvas is no longer rigidly fixed but pulled taut with steel wires, responding to gravity, temperature, and friction. The curling of fabric, detachment of tape, and sagging under weight are not accidents but constitutive elements of the work. In pieces such as The Painting Dreaming a Nightmare(2025), painting is experienced as a body. It is no longer a static surface affixed to a wall but a flexible organism interacting with its environment.

Topography & Continuity

While Park’s work resonates with broader contemporary approaches to the body in painting, it distinguishes itself by reducing the body to material rather than amplifying emotional narrative or social symbolism. Aging, wrinkles, and inclination are not extended into tragic stories but reconstructed through physical conditions such as time and gravity. This orientation favors structure over excess emotion and condition over symbolic interpretation.
 
Another defining characteristic lies in her refusal to treat painting as an image detached from its support. The grain of paper, the folds of fabric, and the tension of suspended canvas are not formal experiments alone but conditions that constitute what might be called the “body of painting.” In this sense, her engagement with painting’s internal problems remains inseparable from her inquiry into corporeality.
 
Over time, her work has moved from dream-based narratives to the concept of inclination, then toward structural forces, and most recently toward the physicality of painting itself. As the conceptual framework has grown more distilled, the formal language has become more complex. Emotional density has diminished, while material density has intensified.
 
Rather than expanding toward a new thematic territory, her future direction appears closer to a continued adjustment of the relationship between body and material within the medium of painting. Inclination, wrinkles, tension, and gravity remain operative vocabularies, yet their formal manifestations are not fixed. Rather than constructing a closed world, Park’s painting persists in a state of ongoing transformation alongside matter itself.

Works of Art

Interest in the ‘Body’ and the Methodology of Painting

Articles

Exhibitions

Activities