Insook Park's solo exhibition, "Respiration," at LOT-EK showcases 13 recent pivotal drawings and paintings of plum blossom trees an so bojagi's (Korean quilts) in an abstract language. Curated by Julie Jang and Chunbum Park, the exhibition is Insook Park's thesis on the potential for the physical world and beings to be liberated onto a plateau of spiritual existence and state through the investigation of nature and meditation, memory and nostalgia, religion (Christianity) within a Korean and outsider context relating to pre modern Korea and the current diaspora.
Affected by the noise and the limitations of the material world, Park seeks transformation and paradigm shift of her state of existence from the material realm towards spirituality and inner peace. In her works, materiality of paint and colored pencils on wooden panels equate to the qualities of the physical realm. And the meditative aspect of the drawing process involving repetitive movement that generates sound of drawing suggests nature and spirituality.
The oppositional duality between the visible and the invisible, the material and the spiritual, and nature and culture becomes a fiction rather than a true story, as non-oppositional interrelated interactions and relations in Park's works. This follows the Eastern philosophy of Yin and Yang, in which the positive exists within the negative and vice versa.
In depicting the plum blossom trees and bojagi's in contact with the moonlight and the (semi- translucently permeating) sunlight respectively, the artist suggests the potential for the physical properties, phenomena, and beings to undergo paradigm shift and spiritual transformation. This belief is most solidly formed by the artist 's observation of the material objects' interaction with light and fields of energy, which activate the spiritual transformation.
The material and spiritual worlds are not in oppositional binary but are interconnected within an arc in Park's worldview. This disruption on the binary ideological system allows the artist as the outsider and a part of the Korean diaspora to reenter and critically reengage with the dominant and centrally positioned power structure. Korean diaspora/outsider identity can impact the American mainstream consciousness, and nature and spirituality can transform culture and society in the physical and symbolic realms.
Ultimately, Insook Park's artistic practice reflects on her Korean and Christian identity and longing for inner spiritual peace and belonging (through the power of acceptance and unconditional love). On one level, she pays tribute to the premodern poems, art, and historical events of Korea, but on another, her Christian belief is the greatest driving force for her pursuit of life and continued state of creativity. Through painting and drawing, Park takes on the monumental challenge of unifying the disparate fragments of experience and memory, philosophy and ideology, and religious devotion and spiritual needs, as a Korean woman artist and Christian.