SPACE February 2025 (No. 687)
Exhibition view of ‘Rocks, Smoke, and Pianos’ ©Kim Hyerin
An exhibition titled ‘Rocks, Smoke, and Pianos’ by artist Park Jina was held from Dec. 3, 2024 to Jan. 26 at Kukje Gallery’s Seoul K2 and Hanok. Using oil and watercolour, Park presented her photographed images of work locations that were hidden behind the ‘Staff Only’ sign. The terms rock, smoke, and piano are general terms that represent respectively the three workspaces: the exhibition hall, restaurant kitchen, and piano factory. Instead of merely reproducing her photographs into paintings, Park incorporates abstract elements to her work by integrating various scenes together and adding camera lens distortion. The spontaneous and transient moment of everyday life is recomposed into a painting and is thus granted a new kind of temporality and physicality. The kitchen series is configured to draw attention to the kitchen space and smoke rather than the flow of time and the individuals’ actions. The figures in Park’s paintings are either given ambiguous postures that make it difficult to guess what they are doing or are split up within the same picture. By stripping off the context from these figures and objective time, the artist presents a concrete and detailed image of the concealed labour while also delineating the artwork’s unique spatiality from objective spatiality. As one traverses through the new spatiotemporality created by the artist, one might feel as though one is peeking into the prohibited space through the canvas.
