This interview proceeds with two panel members who have no knowledge of artist Park Hye-soo's work. It is not planned by an artist and a curator in a certain form, but rather intended to let interviewers introduce an artist in an unexpected situation. In other words, it is one of preview methods of letting a curator(interviewer) ask questions that a viewer may have when first facing art works, on behalf of viewers, and an artist clarifying his(her) position.
-artswill
Interviewers Artist- PARK, Hye-Soo
Panel Yoon Jae-gap(Curator , Inside Gallery , Lee Seung-mi(Curator, Jebiwool Museum)
Description & Edit Kim Hong-il (artsWILL)
Q. I heard that you had majored in carving and modelling, but your art genre seems to be taken to pieces. It looks like paining, also like establishment.
A. I don't work for a certain limited genre. The tendency of my work depends on what I want to express. It is an artist's point of view that never changes. It seems that people generally understand that an artist is the person who creates something. I think, however, that an artist is the person who discovers something. I don't mean discovery of something great, unknown to the world. Ar artist tries to re-discover small trivial things around us that we don't really get to recognize. Those things are not really insignificant and not to be forgotten. I do my work hoping that people, viewers will newly discover those little things (or have aesthetic experience). It is a matter of communication I want to stress on my work. The desire that makes my discovery transferred to viewers...
Q. On the general public's point of view, form and continuance of art work prevails in their preoccupations of art. That is, an art work has a form as a complete body, and it also has perenniality when completed with its time fixed. Speaking of material(medium) first, working with pollen or leaf powder should be translated in a very different way when approached by common ideas. For example, powder is vulnerable to physical change- easily shatters by small breeze or bees' movement. Of course, the case of a complete work should be another thing though..
Also, I'd like to hear your answer related to the importance of process and the matter of form that is revealed at the end of process.
Well, I don't really intend to stop my work from changing. Observing nature makes me realize that it grows and changes by itself. That is, I found that nature changes through certain process, and it is not created or maintained by someone. I think all that gradual changing process reveals a form. The fact that my work takes process importantly is similar to nature's order " process determines form."
At first, I was under the obsession that I should do my work that has a form. However, the most beautiful and complete form to me already existed, and it led me to think it is my job to discover and show those existing beings. A form that appears at the end of process shows something unthinkable and totally different from what it was first discovered. It stems from the thought that the same form does not give novelty to things we are accustomed to. For instance, a Green series that started from 1999 has all square forms, and it is intented to make a viewer, who sees square form that does not exist in nature with creature of nature, reminded of the original form that developed in his(her) head.
Q. So does it mean giving up your conviction of form? It looks like having a certain relation between the matter of form and attitude and method of work....
I'm just skeptical about discussing something only with form. The work that does not allow a viewer room for thinking will be easily forgotten... If form opens me and a viewer's eyes, I could do it again... However, I think that only delivers an individual's story.
How to do it matters to me rather than what to do. Points of view on nature and the world deeply affect an artist's thoughts of his(her) work, and they are alike with each other, I think. An artist's attitude of creating something can be arrogance of a human being. It is a misunderstanding that he/she is an owner of it.
This work started when I was watching blue sky, and I wanted to make the color. I couldn't make it, however... Then I realized. At the very moment, there already existed colors that I abused or tried to create. Since then, the word creation had no meaning to my work.
Q. Let's go back to the process of your work. Isn't all the process of collecting, grinding, and categorizing too much labor to you?
Well, thinking of just results, I may agree with you, but I do enjoy the process. Collecting is an approach of my own attitude toward recognition, and I feel that I am no different being from those collected materials-not existing paints but leaves or petals we often see- in the process of changing them into finely ground powder.
Q. Even if so, I'd like you to be more serious about distinction from general art. For example, art work has form. Continuance/ work character - Connotation and metaphor of work, and also the general idea that an artist equals a creator. Looking at you without prejudice, I'd like to point that an artist can't help having a confronting composition with work process and work itself. For instance, shouldn't an artist consider confronting process and removing unnecessary preoccupied concepts until work process becomes unified with him or her, in other words, until delivering work process as a crystal?
On the other hand, even though you think much of work process, shouldn't you arrange yourself related to the matter of time that the process has in that your work is different from process art, earth art or body art(expression media- various kinds of art form whose materials depend on basic things) in using pollen?
Q. Well, I must change as much my work changes. That includes everything that exists at this time. Though I say a lot of things, but someday I'll say what I have to say. Future is unpredictable, and change of each individual in it is more difficult to predict. However, all my work will contain the same contents whatever form it will have.
I believer all art is the product of efforts for mental ventilation. If you agree with emotional change, restoration or circulation of sympathizing emotions that a work of art evokes are important virtues or art. Therefore, I believe it is impossible without solving the matter of communication. I think it is the most desirable to allow viewers to share new things hidden behind the environment they are used to, not limiting art work to an individual's private enjoyment.
Q. Any explanation about this exhibition?
The title of this exhibition is " depth felt on surface". Phenomena that allow us to recognize the inside from the outside.... I feel the rapid change of time through colors of natural creatures in collecting things. That change is made by inside power as well as its environment, I thought. " Depth felt on surface" is the process(change) seen from the outside. I worked on it by the language of feelings such as ' Floating', 'spreading', and' fragrance' . It is my intention to feel the inside while watching the outside. The attempt to call a viewer's attention rather than making the work itself reveal something continues in this exhibition.