The Whole Painting Vanished

About the exhibition

‘The Whole Painting Vanished’ is a presentation of latest abstract paintings by Hyungji Park, a Korean artist who has been exploring painting itself for over a decade. What does it mean that paintings vanished? As Philip Guston (painter, 1913-1980) said “the whole painting vanished” is a disappearance that destruction unveils construction “as if the unexpected appears for the first time”. This transforms painting from the process of “additions of this and that” into dynamics that is revealed when “constant failing on painting this and that”. The mysterious dynamics only repeats the present with brief existence of images, leaving the future to the complete unknown. In this regard, Hyungji Park’s painting remains distinctively temporal. It is coexistence of the presents and they embrace all the past at the same time and do not assume the preceding future. Evaporating trivia from the context of a common sense and painterly incidents created while collapsed and expunged produce a new context that is derailed from the conventions of painting such as discourses and completion. Choices that suddenly awake sensual ailment without a pre-determined direction, are like an attempt to trail a form of freedom which is offered by painting, but not yet fully appreciated. While modification is an action to approach a blueprint by removal and undoing things that were already done, continuous layers that are guided by traces of the erased and scratched connect intuitive narratives of incidents