The Glittering Details of Nature
All living things in nature have different shapes, colors, and textures. They shine beautifully, each with distinct individuality. These particularities and differences are the essences of life. Death goes against such differences, so this results in uniformity. It is through death that living beings erase their differences and disappear, eventually becoming soil or dust. Being alive and maintaining life may be a desperate effort not to become a single substance or undergo homogenization. So the various entities that have life go straight, constantly changing and creating countless differences.
Park HyoJeong is recreating the shapes and physical properties of multiple creatures encountered in nature and the emotional aspects triggered by them. For artists living in nature, the constant patterns of change in nature— and the existence of individual creatures— are important mediators that influence their work and provide guidance to their artistic process. It would not be an exaggeration to say that nature's influence on art is so strong that most of the works that define art history originate from the natural world. Even modern art, which tries to escape the recreation of nature, still has its origins in nature but seeks to expand continuously through novel approaches and interpretations. According to the artist, nature is "always true, sophisticated, and logical and it hides deep details." Therefore the artist must find some order in nature that encapsulates that beauty. Park seeks to find the mysterious structures and patterns of invisible nature and the mystery of the driving force behind such phenomena. As such, nature is the core material of all works for the artist, and it also represents the natural laws behind it, that is, the cyclical process of nature" s creation and growth.
Park Hyo-jeong's work builds an alternative representation by smoothing natural materials such as wood, stones, and jade organically, applying minimal care, and connecting them. Several different parts are assembled, and it is not a uniform structure with a congruent surface but, instead, a sculpture formed by combining and intertwining separate mediums. The sculpture as a collage was solidified into a static solid, with a strange harmony of different physical properties, colors, and textures. Each sensitive material glows cautiously with physical distinction and color. In this work, a solid material with sensitive skin transforms the surface into a pictorial area, which exposes the physical disparities of the individual mediums as they are, supported by the intention to make nature as natural as possible. For example, small and soft actual plant stems, leaves, and fruits are coated on gold and silver foil to create a hanging shape or hanging in a net; or the casts may spread close to the flat bronze surface. In yet another piece, the form of a large flower blooming uses iron as a support, and the bloom itself is made with aluminum to show its colors.
The process of transforming fibrous vegetation into solid, cold substances such as stone, jade, bronze, and iron is to make temporary and momentary life permanent and to represent the transformation of plants reconciled with unfamiliar sensations and materials. The work is divided into three-dimensional objects combined with flat paintings on Korean paper with soil, wood and jade, bronze, and iron. The artist created a screen full of pictorial traces on a Korean paper background and used thin threads coated with paint on it to draw sharp and thin lines as if swimming on the screen. The line shows a vital path of life on Korean paper. The line rises vertically or pushes out toward the center from the side of the canvas, drawing a large arc, and disappears quickly. Stains and smudges of paint permeate the swollen surface where the material of Korean paper rises tactilely, and the abstract painting soaked with these paints evokes the image of a natural phenomenon such as rain or snow falling. When witnessing an impressive moment encountered in nature or a fluid atmosphere that flows and changes; an invisible feeling forms. Somewhere vertically rising, vibrant plants grow in abundance. The accidental and determined taste of positive life force well made of thread, not hands and brushes, represents nature's attributes.
The artist's pictorial tastes can be found in other works. The small, thin oval jade allows you to appreciate the color of the jade itself and its natural pattern, like a painting inside the surface that has been pushed inside. It unfolds the original pattern of the interior of the jade, reminiscent of the scenery of the mountains and rivers drawn in ink. The artist discovers and presents this landscape inside the jade, generally excluded from visibility. This object task, which calls the invisible inside surface of the material into the area of visibility, presents the lines, images, and traces that nature voluntarily created through the work.
A series of works depicting trees shows the pictorial texture of the wood surface more actively. The process of trimming the wood flat and attaching it to the wall brings out the texture of the wood and makes it the screen itself. A square plane is an example of invoking a painting concealed in a material by using the grain and lines of the tree itself. On top of that, jade naturally has several colors that extend to some parts of the natural picture created by the tree's skin. Various materials are tailored to the components necessary to build a screen, and their colors, textures, and patterns serve as pictures that create visual attractions. Here, the artist delicately and sensibly selected the size, color, and pattern of each material to form harmony—- an ensemble of natural materials. This work blurs the boundary between sculpture and painting. Another work is done against the wall, which looks like an actual plant being gilded and hanging in a net. The piece, which hangs toward the floor, makes the skin only with fine lines without heavy volume and lumps, then flows down extremely lightly, penetrating the viewer's eyes. Fine lines appear with shadows that have a parallel relationship with the physical structure, resulting in a pair of matter/lines and shades that attract the wall. It calls to mind the visual of plants parasitic on a wall.
By implementing stereoscopic, Park bakes the spontaneous and perfectly natural shape formed by randomly dropping a lump of soil on a metal pedestal. The large flowers in full bloom were wrinkled and hardened with the casting. Park's previous work, which is impressive with its egg-like archetypes, deep colors, and sharp incisions of its soft surface, embraces ambivalent concepts such as soil and iron, circles and straight lines, and warmth and cold. At the same time, it was proper to its existence at the point of being reminiscent of everything. But, on the other hand, it tactilely reveals the texture of the soft, fibrous petals as straightening the antithetical colored, floating petals with rigid metallic legs and supports. This, too, is a work in which union and separation are freely carried out. The flower, which rises from the horizontal floor, creates an environment in which it is supported by the metal wire's vitality, durability, and movement. The iron acts as a pedestal, uplifting the organic structure. It is an invigorating task in which pictorial expression, color sense, and the intersection of lines drawn in the air are interwoven.
Additionally, this artist's other work also reveals the craftsmanship that functions on a practical level. A typical work is a table-shaped work with a horizontally spread floor, and organic curved legs support the surface shining with solid bronze properties. The lines are derived from plant stems and shapes, such as j, the image of a plant filling the table.
The artist intends to realize the structure and beauty of individual creatures originating from nature by combining, connecting, and conjoining various natural materials. The materials used are also dealt with with the intention of preserving the material's physical properties, colors, and surfaces at the maximum possible level while minimizing the artist's intervention. This work, combined with inevitable and avoidable contact, is like a tapestry of finely woven materials of different fabrics. In addition, it has a solid constructive character in that it avoids the traditional method of cutting or adding from a single medium and is composed with a combination of each element.
Park HyoJeong's sculpture implicates living creatures in some way, which can be seen in the direct image of plants, the active connection of natural materials themselves, or the methodology of work that honors the nature of life. Concisely, it is noticeable that it is not only working but also driving the way vegetation exists and virtues toward achieving the stimulating effects of life.
Written by YoungTaek Park (Professor of Gyeonggi University, Art Review)
Bright Matter
All of god’s creations have their own characteristics and differences such as in form, color, and scent. All objects and living things in the world glisten in their own unique beauty.
When scattered things are gathered and structures are freely disassembled, every component again shines as an independent entity.
As always, I try not to hurt or distort the essence of wood, stone, and the natural metals in the process toward completion. I let the materials’ thoughts and languages meet and individually stand, rather than clash against one another.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman had said, “Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.”
The beauty of nature is in its order. Nature has always been honest, intricate, and logical. It conceals profound details.
As one traces such hidden structures and patterns through materials—beyond the reverence for the visible domain of matter—one may start to feel truly moved and comforted by the invisible order in creation and the potential in patterns.
Written by Artist HyoJeong Park
Sep, 2020
In the Enchanted Garden of Park Hyo-Jeong
Park Hyo-Jeong compares her work to the garden. Sculptor Park prefers to use the minimal and geometric figures, but a finished work is not too far from the shape of the nature because of the rounded endings and irregular lines of branches of a tree.
Her garden, which is artificially created by touch of the artist, represents and follows the law of the nature.
First of all, she uses the products from the nature, which are wood, iron, and clay. She cuts a tree stump with achisel to create a cushion-sized seed and sometimes polishes a rectangular tree pole with a sand paper. Then, finely polished pine tree pole is connected to the side of quadrilateral bronze. A work itself creates the shape of keomunko, the Korean traditional harp, which has a bronze head.
On the surface of wood, an annual ring spreads out as rippling waves on the calm water and the pattern repeats gently on the fire cast bronze. This abstract work is consisted of rectangular wood pole and square metal. It resembles a play of duck and drake on the water. Also, it reminds of an echo of light pebble. The main medium of her work can be thought of water and wood. And, she brings up the form of visualization and an auditorial resonance within her work. Park crops wood and scoops up bronze as if she creates the vibes of keomumko.
Park Hyo-Jeong has started to use clay recently. Her ceramics, which are well rounded and show a great volume, are completed with a natural and naive finishing technique. To make the ceramics look natural, she bakes them when they are simply glazed. Park expresses her satisfaction on the accentuated expansions of ceramic when it is reversed rather than its' thin edges. The meaning of space in her ceramic works began to consolidate its function of container. Ceramics usually initiate the starting point of the civilization. The history of Mankind began with creation of creators and barrels to use them in the primeval life. If the space of ceramics can be compared to the matrix of culture of the mankind, than that means Parks' works strengthen the meaning of space within the nature as well as mankind did.
Park Hyo-Jeong's works are stabilized with the frame of five elements : wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Her garden works, which have those five elements from the nature, are a harmonious space where lives live. A tree burns itself to create fire and the fire burns down everything to make them return to earth. Earth protects iron not to break and metal makes the water to let it flow away. The water provides nutrition to a tree on the ground to grow up. Thus, a tree saves fire, fire helps earth, and than earth holds iron. Than again, iron makes the water, and water saves a tree. Park practices this theory of harmonious repetition in her works.
A space within bronze or ceramic bowl creates a natural place for water to rest. In her work, metal is not a tool to shape the medium but a partner that exist in symbiotic relationship with wood, creating an environment for life. Within this space, water of life for a tree or plant can be placed. Greenish moss and lotus shade over Park's ceramic or bronze vessel will create a natural atmosphere that complements each other. Park's Garden is a perfect balance between art and the nature. All natural components of her garden are complements to the nature and its law.
She calls her works a "standing garden". Her geometrically simplistic artwork is a reminder as if a feeling from a natural forest away from the artificial creation. Although her work is an artificial in its process, but the environment expressed as the result is the law and the beauty of the universe itself. Her garden is the space of matrix. It is the plants and seed of nature as well as the vessel that conceives and nourish them within its water of life.
Written by Kwon Young-Jin (Curator, KeumsanGallery)
There are only a handful of artists who are capable of comprehending the properties of the materials they use and deriving from those subjects the exact form they wish to as well as Park Hyo Jeong can.
With wood, she makes noticeable the greatest beauty wood can possess. When working with earth, she gives it a form becoming of earth, and with metal, she works so that the material's inherent characteristics are fully revealed, whether the metal be silver or bronze. Like a skilled chef cooking with aromatic pine mushrooms or fresh fish, Park Hyo Jeong's work is plain yet refined, and fresh enough to leave the viewers feeling refreshed.
Regardless of its size, all of Park Hyo Jeong's works encompass nature or small life forms.
frail blades of grass bravely and freshly grow in the gaps of a sculpture made of earth, or deep waterways allow for moss and water plants to grow in round bronze sculptures that remind us of the rich eatrh. The harmony between the boards made of earth to naturally support the darkened lines of darkened persimmon tree she ran across by chance, and the metal boards supporting those earthen boards is a piece expressing the natural(!) order of life that Park Hyo Jeong derived from her materials. This is a piece I enjoy alone.
As a close acquaintance of the artist Park Hyo Jeong, I see that she is a rare case that has successfully combined the board mind needed to embrace everyone with an unsurpassed passion and devotion towards her work.
This is why the pieces that helped create the Park Hyo Jeong who always welcomes new challenges, invests herself in those challenges without reservation, and maintains her humility and warmth towardrs others, are so comfortable and sympathetic, just like their creator.
Art dealers are bound to become excited when they meet artists who create great works and possess infinite potential.
Park HyoJeong's work, with their western form that encompasses eastern sentiment and modern refinement that embraces the beauty of the old times captivates me.
I am filled with the passion to jump on the global stage as an art dealer through the works of Park Hyo Jeong, which even comfort us with nature-friendly tendencies. I am one of many who have fallen in love with the works of Park HyoJeong.
Written by Lee Kyung Eun (President, ArtLink Gallery)
What is art?
I believe art communicates visual and aesthetic spirituality to humans.
The current world we live in is surrounded by complex networks causing itself pressure and fatigue.
How then does my work function as art?
I wish my work could console and comfort or resonate in in some kind of way within someone.
They say the more the merrier, but the inundant images and information drive towards the byproduct of discomfort and chaos.
Small and scarceness, plain simplicity, loneliness by onself.
These are some terms I wish to pursue.
To realize such thoughts and stories, I've chosen jade as my material.
I slowly complete the work by taking away and restraining what I want to say.
The language conveyed and the way it holds it self.
And I look.
Written by Artist Park Hyo Jeong
About Korean Jade
Jade naturally has its own artistic sensitivity and aesthetics, but further symbolizes complete beauty and spiritual value based on Confucianism.
“Ye-gi” writes (禮記; “Book of Rites”, one of the Five Classics of Confucianism) “the noble should cultivate virtue like jade”; here the noble means etiquette and politeness, and the virtue it needs to strive after was compared to jade. Jade is consisted of jadeite and nephrite.
The jade mined from Chuncheon, Korea is named “Yangji-ok” (羊脂玉) as it looks like solidified sheep’s fat.
The white jade’s rarity and high quality are globally acknowledged.
Nephrites’ etymology is kidney stone in Greek, as it was believed to have cured kidney stones. It generates anion and revitalizes cells, and calms one down like forests, affecting humans directly in their body and soul.
It is truly a gift from nature.