Gangnam, Seoul
MeeNa Park
House
One and JUpon a simple instruction ‘Draw a house on a sheet of paper using 12 color pencils,’ an array of different houses appear. A house made of square walls and a triangular roof, a house with a chimney and yard, a high-rise apartment, a glittering gem house, and the list goes on for unlimited forms of houses we could ever imagine. When one tries to visualize a ‘house’, people are often influenced by sociocultural fixed ideas about houses and desires of a dream house. MeeNa Park works on the very aspect of how such influences had formed personal views, experience, and taste in many complex levels, which are reflected again in this image of ‘house.’ As Park had been questioning social systems including rules that we abide by, she explores this question via components of painting: color & image. After collecting vast data of contemporary consumption of color, icon, and symbol, Park classifies the data under her own criteria and analyzes the properties of our society. Drawing visual results from such analysis, she captures them onto paintings which mostly feature vivid color palettes and clearly outlined icons. The smooth canvas invites our eyes to linger evenly throughout the surface. “House”, her second solo exhibition at One and J. Gallery, presents diverse appearances of houses that have been designed under Park’s unique methodology. The viewer can contemplate on the social facet reflected on each work, especially with the paintings and drawings of the series ‘House’ that were created from 1999 until 2023. For over two decades, MeeNa Park had created series such as ‘Scream’, ‘Color-Furniture’, ‘FPM’, and ‘BW(Black & White)’ which were all independent from each other. But for this solo exhibition “House,” she has given her first attempt in pairing them. Park links the ‘House’ series with other series by inviting ‘Sky’, ‘Set Colors’, ‘Dingbat’, ‘Drawing’ series as references. Through this process, Park has newly created an intersection called ‘house’ among her seemingly scattered series. Just as a house standing alone would gain more scope and meaning as village, city, and country, while mingling with the surroundings, the exhibition “House” regenerates networking among her own works as well as expands Park’s art world. Born in 1973 in Korea, MeeNa Park is now based and works in Seoul, Korea. She received her B.F.A in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and M.F.A in Painting from Hunter College, City University of New York. Park has held solo exhibitions at One and J. Gallery, Seoul (2023); Atelier Hermès, Seoul (2023); Seoul Children’s Museum, Seoul (2023); Audio Visual Pavilion, Seoul (2020); Over the Influence, Hong Kong (2019); SeMA Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2016) and others. Participating in numerous group exhibitions, those were held at the Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2022, 2019); Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeonggi (2021); MMCA Seoul, Seoul (2020); Doosan Gallery, New York (2019) and many more. Park was awarded the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s citation and the first Doosan Yonkang Art Award in 2010. Her works are in the permanent collections of MMCA, Korea; SeMA, Korea; Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Korea; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; Ilmin Museum of Art, Korea, and others.