Yoon Young Park (b. 1968), who majored in Korean painting, is well-known for her works that directly collect and trace real-life events, reconstructing them in her own unique way using elements of Korean painting. Her work spans various media, including drawing, poetry, film, and installation, through which she employs a metaphorical approach to question the truthfulness of the "facts" we believe in.

Park has introduced a new genre of Korean painting by combining traditional techniques with pictograms and logotype images in works like ‘Pictogram Landscape’ and ‘Logo Landscape.’ These fresh experiments stem from the artist’s pure curiosity about the objects and events she encounters in everyday life.
 
For example, in KLEENEX LANDSCAPE (2003), Park painted a landscape on an ordinary box of Kleenex tissues sold in stores. The tissue, pulled out to resemble a mountain, harmonizes with the traditional ink painted fish originally printed on the box. Additionally, she reinterpreted the mountain shapes from the logos of bottled water brands Evian and Volvic, translating them into scroll paintings for her ‘Logo Landscape’ series.

Yoon Young Park's work begins with her curiosity about the things that capture her attention. Over the years, she has been drawn to events such as the Pickton Pig Farm, the Seung-Hui Cho shooting, the Highway of Tears, Riverview Mental Hospital, Downtown Eastside, Martin Luther King, Baker Mountain, and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.
 
She thoroughly tracks and researches these events, not only seeking clues through various media but also visiting the sites and conducting interviews. The clues gathered and inferred from these events are then reimagined and reinterpreted through her creative lens.

Park’s notable work, Pickton Lake (2005), is based on the ‘Pickton Pig Farm Murders’ in Canada. Robert William Pickton, owner of the second-largest farm in Canada, was a serial killer who, over 30 years, brutally murdered 69 women, using their remains as pig feed and exporting the meat across North America. This horrifying crime occurred in Vancouver, often considered one of the most livable cities in the world, prompting the artist to reflect deeply on its implications. The event was reinterpreted by Park in various media, including video, folding screens, and installation art.
 
Her first work related to this case was Pickton Paradise (2004). After creating Pickton Paradise, Park wrote a piece titled The Blue Pillars That Appear for a Short Time But Disappear, mixing various stories that could be connected to the case. Based on this text, she produced Pickton Lake.

Park’s work, which originated from the Pickton ‘Pig Farm Murders,’ evolves into a unique fiction of her own, blending fact with her imagination, creating various interconnections. The Shadow Lake (2005), commissioned by the Anyang Public Art Project (APAP), is one such piece that emerged as a continuation of these connections.
 
In this work, Park intertwines the narrative of the murder case with elements from the ballet Swan Lake, the film The Elephant Man, the TV series Twin Peaks, the musical The Phantom of the Opera, Ernest Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants, the pop song Jennie’s Got a Gun, and Salvador Dalí’s painting Swans Reflecting Elephants, among others. By weaving these stories together, she seeks to trace the fates of the missing women. The folding screen The Shadow Lake was installed in Anyang, a place meaning "paradise," where she hoped these women might find peace.

One day, Park watched a sanitary pad commercial on television and was reminded of Mong u dowondo (Trip to Dowon(Paradise of Taoism) in a dream). The commercial depicted menstruation in a pure and idealized way, far removed from the reality of the experience. This led the artist to connect it to Mong u dowondo, a painting that portrays an unattainable utopia.
 
Inspired by this chance encounter with the TV ad, Park created a new link and went on to produce Sleep Walking on Pad, a parody of Mong u dowondo drawn on actual sanitary pads. The ink’s natural spread on the pads created a blurry effect, reflecting the unclear and dreamlike quality of a "dream journey" state.

In her 2007 solo exhibition "Ixtlan Stop" at ARARIO GALLERY, Park presented works inspired by Carlos Castaneda’s novel Journey to Ixtlan. The artist was particularly drawn to the concept of "Ixtlan," a virtual space connected to this world that can only be reached by relinquishing desires for things like love or ambition, akin to the Buddhist notion of nirvana.
 
Through the exhibition, Park reimagined Ixtlan as a place untouched by crime or disaster—essentially a space where the tragic events of this world could be prevented. She recreated and reinterpreted the tragic incidents that have long captured her interest, such as the Seung-Hui Cho shooting, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Pickton farm murders, within the fictional realm of Ixtlan. This allowed her to explore and transcend these events in a new context.

The artist sketched physical triggers of tragic events, such as guns, onto the folding screen panels. She then depicted these objects being overtaken and enveloped by three tools from Castaneda's novel—peyote, jimson weed, and psilocybin/Hallucinogenic mushroom— which are necessary for reaching Ixtlan. These substances symbolically grew over the weapons, acting as a kind of control mechanism to halt the tragedies.

In 2019, Park held her first solo exhibition in nine years, titled “YOU, Live!: Twelve-Door Handles” at the Ilmin Museum of Art. The exhibition took the form of a theater-exhibition platform centered around a new script written by the artist, Twelve-Door Handles. This script was a reconstruction of contemporary events, such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters and the Libya invasion of the UK, blending these investigations with her personal experiences. The narrative unfolded across 12 intertwined timelines.
 
The exhibition was presented like a mystery novel, where viewers were guided to uncover the hidden stories behind the 12 door handles. A narration led the audience through the experience, which utilized an organic mix of scripts, sound, video, drawing, sculpture, and archives to create spontaneous and improvisational moments. The script Twelve-Door Handles was later reimagined in various forms, including a post-dramatic theater production Your Supper by director Lim Hyung-jin, and an essay by poet Shim Bo-seon, showcasing the work’s adaptability across different mediums.

Yoon Young Park’s work can be seen as a journey that begins with specific events, delving into them to draw inferences and create new connections in her own unique way. Within this journey, seemingly unrelated events may intertwine, and personal experiences can serve as a bridge to form new narratives. Her art always remains open-ended, evolving in the realm of her imagination and that of the audience, forging new paths forward.

“It seems appropriate to say that my work starts from a sense of ‘curiosity’ about the things I’m interested in. There are backgrounds, clues, and unresolved mysteries within it.” (From the artist's note)

Yoon Young Park received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Korean Painting from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. She has had solo exhibitions at Ilmin Museum of Art (Seoul, 2019-2020), Mongin Art Center (Seoul, 2010), ARARIO GALLERY (Cheonan, Korea, 2007), and Insa Art Space (Seoul, 2005).
 
Her work has also been included in various group exhibitions at the world’s leading institutions including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (Gwacheon, Korea, 2010), Atelier Hermes (Seoul, 2009), The National Museum of China (Beijing, 2007), Leeum Museum of Art (Seoul, 2006) and UNESCO (Paris, 2006). Park lives and works in both Canada and Seoul, Korea.

References

• 두산아트센터, 박윤영 (DOOSAN Art Center, Yoon Young Park)
• 아라리오갤러리, 익슬란 스탑 (ARARIO GALLERY, Ixtlan Stop)
• 국립현대미술관, 박윤영 | 픽톤의 호수 | 2005 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), Yoon Young Park | Pickton Lake | 2005)
• 안양공공예술프로젝트, 박윤영 – 그림자 호수 (Anyang Public Art Project (APAP), Yoon Young Park – The Shadow Lake)
• 일민미술관, YOU, Live!: 12개의 문고리 (Ilmin Museum of Art, YOU, Live!: Twelve-Door Handles)