ARTIST STATEMENT

Whenever I observe a scene, I start considering its non-physical dimension over its physicality. The transition from the outer space to the inner space accompanies the liminal phenomena such as time, noise, language, motion and emotion, which accumulate from consciousness and unconsciousness. To me, liminal space happens between physical presence and abstract sense in it. I identify the phenomena from my personal experience in a relationship with a person, my surroundings, different languages and body experiences. When one-side (it could be a person, physical force, etc.) pulls the another side, tension is created. If the balance between two elements maintains equilibrium, the moment is well supported. However, in another case, the unbalanced force would break the relationship to nothing or the domination of one. To me, the in between space is not able to be verbalized or captured in a moment, but able to be read or written by repetition in everyday experience.

With this idea, I have been trying to write or read my everyday experience with both visual language and text. I am working on stretched fabrics with acrylic paint. I found the intertwined space from the physicality to abstraction in the painting process, which involves sawing, building wooden structures, and stretching different types of fabrics to reveal the principle of the space, including tension and compression. The solid shape from the built structure frames the image, and the image from the water and pigments absorbs and breaks the structure. Finally, it reveals the association with frame and my body experience. Also, I have created in-reverse process, which indicates doubling or mirroring. I paint on the stretched fabric and then detach it. Again, I turn it over and re-stretch it so that one side can have the aspect of the other side. It is a part of the way to expose the idea of the relation of one to another. I incorporate a building process into the paintings, thus emphasizing my own physical experience and opening the intervals between material and visual information to viewers.

BIOGRAPHY

Jinie Park was born in 1987 in Seoul, South Korea. She lives and works in Philadelphia. She received her MFA in painting in 2015 from the Maryland Institute College of Art and BFA in painting from Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea. She had solo shows including Reap/Sow  Hamilton gallery (Baltimore, USA); Mobility at Elizabeth Leach gallery (Portland, USA); and From a Number at Great White Wall gallery (Baltimore, USA). Recent exhibitions include 2016 Members Juried Exhibition at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, (Delaware, USA); Surface Tension at Current Space (Baltimore, USA); Non-Representational Painting Competition Finalists Show at Miami University (Oxford, USA); Back to School Season at Steven Harvey Fine Art Project (New York, USA). She was the winner of the Maryland Art Council Individual Artist Award in 2016 (Maryland, USA); Henry Walters Traveling Fellowship (Baltimore, USA); and Salzburg Summer Academy full grant (Salzburg, Austria) in 2015.