Sejin Park (b. 1977) has been capturing ordinary landscapes around us with a keen perspective. Her landscape paintings go beyond the physical surfaces of the visible world, reflecting deeper layers. Starting from looking within herself through past experiences and memories, the artist expresses the hidden sides of various landscapes that are easily overlooked or cannot be seen with the naked eye.

This style of Sejin Park's landscape painting began in earnest in the early 2000s, with her first works rooted in an old memory of Panmunjom. Her piece Landscape 1993-2002 (2002), exhibited at the Korean Pavilion in the 2005 Venice Biennale, is set against the backdrop of Panmunjom, which she visited on a field trip in 1993.

From the southern guard post of the Joint Security Area, the artist gazed toward the "Bridge of No Return," imagining unseen landscapes that might exist on the unreachable other side. Revisiting these memories, she created the work, where faint silhouettes facing in different directions appear—suggesting North Korean soldiers, South Korean military police, or even a projection of herself.

In this way, the landscapes Sejin Park presents extend from her immediate surroundings—including herself—to distant, faintly perceptible spaces. The boundaries between elements within her paintings are barely discernible, sensed only through thin layers and diffuse light, creating a “landscape” that also exists as a “background” where objects collide and blend.

Through delicate brushstrokes and a textured matière technique, the artist conveys this “landscape as boundary” as a background that reveals the organic movements and encounters of presence and space.

For instance, in her 2005 work Night, rather than focusing on the outlines of forms, the texture of her brushstrokes stands out. This piece is part of her le manteau series, created from 2000 to 2007, and as the series progresses, the boundaries of forms other than the manteau itself become increasingly transparent or blurred, blending nearly indistinguishably with the background color.

Meanwhile, within the composition, the manteau’s patterns become more ornate, and its shadow lengthens. Here, the manteau serves a dual function: it divides and conceals the spaces on either side, while also acting as a bridge that connects and opens these spaces.

Night, a piece from the latter part of the series, explores our sensory experience within the darkness of night. According to the artist, night has no inherent color but is an interpretation of boundaries chosen by the viewer.

The dual sensations of comfort and fear that darkness evokes, along with the indistinct hues of night, are expressed through multiple layers of brushstrokes and paint built up on the canvas. This textured surface allows Night to reveal varied impressions of night, changing subtly with different lighting conditions.

The dreamlike atmosphere created by overlapping and connecting foregrounds and backgrounds, along with faint forms within these landscapes, emerges from a persistent observation of real landscapes as if painting Real scenery landscape depictions. Even in seemingly abstract works like Old Morning (2007), the artist captures the autumn morning landscape of Korea, observed firsthand over an extended period.

To convey the landscape as it appears in reality, she meticulously observes the objects and nature before her. During this process, she undergoes a transformation, merging with every element within the landscape she intends to depict.

Sejin Park’s solo exhibition “Golden Age” at Arario Gallery in 2007 encapsulated her artistic vision. The exhibition title, “Golden Age,” reflects a world within her work where the existence of every entity is stable, and distinctions between "this" and "that" dissolve, creating a realm of interconnectedness on the canvas.

During the year and a half of preparation for the exhibition, the artist painted for more than 10 hours every day, creating a new world on canvas where all objects are connected and life is inherent in continuity, beyond the boundaries of physical space and time.

Sejin Park has also explored various techniques to build her unique world on the canvas. For instance, to better express backgrounds that connect with vague memories or unseen elements, she sometimes opted for paper that absorbs paint rather than canvas that accumulates it.

Additionally, she used materials found in nature, such as cherries or roses. For example, Run and Run Again! (2012) is a landscape painted on paper using cherry juice mixed with acrylic glue.

In 2018, the artist lived in a place where a hilltop wall met the mountains, and she began painting the worn concrete retaining walls she encountered on her daily walks, along with the ordinary landscapes of the hilltop. As she passed through the narrow paths, she found traces of interconnected beings reflecting each other in the seemingly mundane scenes.

Sejin Park states that every cement wall reflects the life on the opposite side, supporting and facing each other. The stains created by rainwater, mold, and dirt mixed with the light and wind from the opposite life form another landscape. The traces of countless beings, including the artist herself, who have passed through that path, appear in her works as distant landscapes, where stains, shadows, and light are interconnected.

In other words, Sejin Park’s landscapes are the stories of the beings that live and exist within them, as well as the way she engages with the world and perceives herself. She reveals the traces of lives left behind by unnamed beings that exist behind the visible world within her landscapes. These traces are shown either directly or subtly, leaving behind only small clues that demonstrate how our lives are continuously connected with others, beyond the canvas.

"Life is the continuity of living, and through it, time is confirmed. Even in places where time seems to have stopped, the absence of time still leaves traces, and I discovered those traces later." (Sejin Park, Artist’s Note)

Sejin Park has received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Painting from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. She has had solo exhibitions at nook gallery (2018, Soeul), DOOSAN Gallery (2012, New York, USA), Arario Gallery (2007, Cheonan, Korea), and Project Space Sarubia (2006, Seoul).

Her Works has also been included in group exhibitions at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art (2005, Torino, Italy), The Korean Pavilion The 51st Venice Biennale (2005, Venice, Italy), Samsung Museum of Modern Art (2003, Seoul, Korea), East Link Gallery (2003, Shanghai, China), Netherlands Media Art Institute (2003, Amsterdam, Netherland), Alternative space Pool (2000, Seoul) and Seoul Art center (1999, Seoul).

References

• 한국경제매거진, [ARTIST] 실경산수의 경계를 넘나들다
• Google Arts & Culture, 리얼디엠지프로젝트, 박세진, 풍경 1993-2002 (Google Arts & Culture, REAL DMZ PROJECT, Sejin Park, Landscape 1993-2002)
• 두산아트센터, 원경 (DOOSAN Art Center, Won-Kyung)
• 스페이스 이수(Space ISU), 밤의 풍경
• 프로젝트 스페이스 사루비아, 망토 (Project Space Sarubia, le manteau)
• 아라리오 갤러리, Golden Age (Arario Gallery, Golden Age)
• 누크 갤러리, 풍경의 빗면 (nook gallery, Aslope)