SE YOON PARK:

ROOTS AND WINGS

NOW OPENING SATURDAY, 06.10.23 | 3PM – 7PM

ON VIEW UNTIL SATURDAY, 08.05.23

“There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

CARVALHO PARK announces the opening of Roots and Wings, Korean-born, New York-based sculptor Se Yoon Park’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Signature to Park’s practice, the artist lucidly marries the geometric with the autobiographical, infusing a precise Minimalist vocabulary with the tangible warmth of shared human experience. Drawing on his foundations in architecture, Park’s complex geometries and towering structures poetically expand on notions of seriality and further his meditations on eternal dualities that lead to self-actualization. His themes are at once personal and universal – the conceptual through line of this series is dreams. Here, six large-scale sculptures – one site-specific, arresting in its monumentality – pen a devotional to the role of Park’s parents, giving reverence and physical form to German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s concept of “roots and wings.”

CONTINUUM: SELF

Set among the dramatic industrialization of 1980s South Korea, Park’s childhood was marked by the transformation of the surrounding scenery: “Overnight, a forest in the back mountains of my hometown, Gumi, turned into a factory complex.” Park’s generation was the first to experience the catalytic possibilities offered by South Korea’s rapidly burgeoning economy, among them, the ability to travel beyond the country’s borders as South Korea entered the global stage. It was the teachings, devotion, and sacrifices of his parents however, that together offered Park both the foundation and invitation to envision the future that he continues to realize, mirrored here in two sculptures duly titled: Continuum: Father and Continuum: Mother.

Luminous in the gallery’s ambient light, the two sculptures’ precise forms are surrounded by a contemplative aura. The component parts of Continuum: Father coalesce to a soaring elongated arc. Continuum: Mother conversely meanders, weightless, but Park nonetheless establishes harmony between the structures’ movements, underscoring the concordance of the two forces at work. The sculptures convey their intense poignancy through sheer simplicity – one must be rooted (strong and independent) to be light (to realize dreams).

The sculptures are comprised of smaller, repeating forms – Park’s self-portrait geometry, Light and Darkness Type A. When illuminated by one light source, their symmetries establish a purposeful equilibrium: 70% of the sculpture’s surface harnesses light, 30% is cast in shadow. The geometries of these “self-reflective objects” repeat, one into the next. Repetition and mirroring are formal motifs engaged throughout Park’s practice, tracing the artist’s pursuit to find himself through himself, principles of 5th century BC Chinese philosopher Mozi: “Do not reflect yourself to the water, but rather reflect yourself to know yourself.” Continuum: Father and Continuum: Mother not only radiate the role of the artist’s parents but are also reflections of Park himself.

DREAM DOLLY

One of the strengths of Park’s work lies in its ability to straddle the line between Minimalism and Conceptualism, while establishing a bond between the work and its audience. Park’s compositions of geometrical forms incite a familiar current through the viewer – none more so than in Dream Dolly. Amassed at 60 x 48 x 24 inches is a meticulously crafted translucent box, encapsulating hundreds of self-portrait sculptures, in spectrums of blue and violet. Color is invariably a diaristic tool, chronicling mood states: blue, while once speaking to melancholy, now signals perseverance, to overcome; red is the clarity of pursuits, of ambition; violet, inherently the result of the two.

The piece is profoundly intimate, and yet monumental. Drawing on the analogy of a child’s piggy bank, Park notes, “It takes a long time. You cannot immediately see the progress. You cannot hold the overarching dream at once.” Emphasizing the focused and persistent processes of his practice, “I have to hold onto them to actualize the dream, until it’s full.” In this accumulation we may find the art historical precedent of Felix Gonzales-Torres – the collective embodiment as a potent signifier of the self. This sculpture echoes Gonzales-Torres’ installations as autobiographical but ultimately universal, its cohesive proliferation existing with uncompromising beauty and simplicity. Dreams are abstract, but Park presents it as a tangible thing. And the dream, in itself, is a portrait.

DREAM PULLEYS

Park’s Dream Pulley looms at ten feet tall – its physicality and sublimity invoking a fantasy state. Park’s cumbrous “root” geometry hovers on one side, a sphere encapsulating hundreds of self-portrait geometries is suspended opposite. In the sculpture’s total construction is the Korean concept of yin-yeon 인연 (yin = fate; yeon = thread). Park underlines the inseparability of roots and wings, its connecting rope a signifier of the Korean belief in “the golden thread,” the fated, unbreakable connection in relationships, or here, of the dualities to realize one’s future self.

Park’s wall-mounted Dream Pulley: Roots and Wings, similarly suspends two Plexiglas boxes, one with an assembly of “roots,” and in the other, the artist’s “butterflies.” This latter geometry is made of two reflecting “crowns,” a form that stems from the calyx of plants, from which yields flowers or fruit, in essence a manifestation of its own kind. In Park’s durational, diaristic practice, this geometry signals an achievement, typically stacked in a column, and now like keepsakes, proliferated and pooled.

CROSSROADS: THE DARK BLOOMS AND SINGS

The conceptual and formal foundations of all Park’s geometries originate from trees, which grow simultaneously in light and darkness. Park’s “self-portrait” comes from the cursive line of branches, “crossroads” from branch segmentation; “void” as that of a tree trunk, at once empty and alive. The forms are distilled and emphasized to structure a personal, iconographic lexicon. Compositionally, Park states, “A tree is like a mirror. The roots reflect the branches – they’re the same. Roots and wings are also interconnected. The wider the roots, the more flexible and expansive the branches.” Ever in tandem, these relationships are what propel Park’s inquiry, navigating universal themes with poetic lyricism. The Dark Blooms and Sings, a site-specific work composed of fifty-two individual “crossroad” sculptures, travels unencumbered by gravity – its cantilevered, serpentine structure writhing through open space. While its ascension and freedom of movement draw immediate attention, this installation is a celebration of the foundation – the quiet rigor of the roots.

Se Yoon Park 박세윤 (b. 1979, South Korea) is a sculptor living and working in New York. Park’s foundation in architecture is reverberated through the deft construction of his geometries and manipulation of gravity in his sculptural installations. Integral to his perspective is the deconstructivist approach of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, founder of Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Netherlands, where Park began his career as an architect. Koolhaas’ concept of the diagram, sourcing all possibilities on approach to a structure, is a defining principle of Park’s practice as a sculptor.

Park conducted his undergraduate studies in architecture at the department of Architectural Engineering at Yonsei University in Seoul and holds a Master of Architecture from Columbia University in New York. In addition to his time at OMA, his work in the realm of architecture includes positions with Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), Fernando Romero Enterprise (FREE), and REX. Park began his exploration of light and shadow in his own work as a sculptor in 2014. His work has since been shown by the European Culture Centre in Venice, in tandem with the 57th Venice Biennale, at the United Nations in the 13th UNCCD exhibition, and in solo and two-person exhibitions in New York and Seoul, at Carvalho Park (New York), Gallery Mark (Seoul), and Huue Contemporary (Seoul, Singapore), and as public art commissions in South Korea. His work has been featured in the Brooklyn Rail, Wallpaper* magazine, Artnet News, Dovetail magazine, Surface, Naver Design Press, Artsy Editorial, the Seoulive, Segye Daily, Seoul Economy Daily, among others.