• Korean Hyper-Modernism in Moscow – Park Sung-Tae – Selma Stern

    Date posted: June 9, 2006 Author: jolanta

    Korean Hyper-Modernism in Moscow – Park Sung-Tae

    Selma Stern

    Spread over three floors at the Krokin Gallery in Moscow,
    Korean artist Park Sung-Tae’s latest installation reminds us of a high-tech
    tower of Babylon or a modern version of Dante’s Inferno. The installation
    consists of infants, grown-ups and animals made from aluminum grids. The
    figures are hung on walls, but leave a space between figure and wall. The
    aluminum grids are illuminated. Thus, each figure occurs twice, as a factually existing aluminum object and as a virtual shadow which could symbolize its clone. The figures’ reflected shadows reveal an existence in space that is both real and unreal.

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    In the basement, aluminum figures swim from the ceiling,
    symbolizing the impossible twilight civilization of our times. Yet, in contrast
    to the lowest circle and final stage of suffering in Dante’s Inferno, Park
    Sung-Tae’s basement is a place of revelation and birth. His figures respect and
    are striving for a peaceful life.

     

    Throughout the entire installation, aluminum grid infants
    that symbolize test-tube embryos are hung up. Finally, in the last floor, the
    artist shows infants as products of the mechanical process of cloning. In real
    life, these infants would have been able to grow up and become adults. Park
    Sung-Tae’s infants, however, look frightened. Is this our future? On the top
    floor of the installation, Park Sung-Tae shows his infants in the colors of the
    rainbow, symbolizing strength and the possibility of rejecting a dark and
    gloomy future.

     

    The artist has said that when he expressed his thoughts
    through paintings drawn on rice paper, he did used the paper with the
    consciousness of it being a medium imbued with a life that embodied respiration
    and aspiration. For Park Sung-Tae this means that when scientific technology
    can finally breathe, it will become a space in which humans will be able to
    breathe. The rice paper’s ability to breathe is as a medium of communication. A
    black ink drawing does not keep the paper from breathing but makes it smoother
    and richer.

    Park Sung-Tea is the most modern artist that I have come
    across in recent times. His art work is fascinating, intelligent and sensitive
    as well as frightening when it forces us to think about modern life and
    culture. The artist himself has thought deeply about how to give shape to his
    subject matters such as existence, communication, sharing, life, evolution,
    traps, cloning, the future, life on earth, society, attitudes, values,
    boundaries, transformation, desire, providence, infinity and last but not least
    modernity. In this new exhibition, human beings have become aluminum grids and
    shadows; but the fact that the artist’s installation is bathed in light and the
    colors of the rainbow in spite of his difficult subject is a proof of his hope
    for a future which is not covered by darkness.

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