(Featured Artist) Next Dansaekhwa Star: Cultural Phenomenon of Park Daa Won Focusing on Calligraphic Art as Performance

HanKyung  Daily  NEWS

(Featured Artist) Next Dansaekhwa Star: Cultural Phenomenon of Park Daa Won 

Focusing on Calligraphic Art as Performance

Art of Dansaekhwa /Now here -Becoming 2015

PARK DAA WON 

Pioneering as Korea’s first generation of Post-Dansaekhwa movement, Park Daa Won show-cases 20 pieces of her well-known “Now Here” series at Joeun Gallery located at Hannam-dong. Exhibition continues until 29 September, 2016.  

Working in New York and Seoul, Park Daa Won’s works have already begun to receive attention from the public and art critics. Her canvas surfaces embody Eastern philosophies, declaring life into individual dots, brushstrokes, and space. Recent buzz on Park was on Samsung Group designating her “Now Here-In Blue” series as an iconic emblem to represent the company’s New Year’s greetings.

Works occupying the exhibition space are dots, elegant strokes, and tranquil margins laid out randomly on blue and brown backgrounds, displaying rhythmic movement and teeming with life. Visitors leave the gallery in the state of peace, having adopted a new and salubrious concept of time and space.

Beneath the randomly arranged dots and lines, the deep colors of the under paintings represent a vacuum in space, void of matter. Providence of the universe revealed through the canvas frames act as windows to mother-nature’s therapeutic rays of sunlight and endless horizons of sky and sea. Park’s visual references of the mysterious universe is apparent in her deep colors that convey richness and depth. Her works carry hidden energy and impart a sense of freedom. 

                                     

                    Now here-Becoming 2015  PARK DAA WON

Park Daa Won’s works start with drawing a line with a brush dipped in single-color paint onto the under painted canvas. Park’s abstract paintings cannot be but understood by intuition as the works embody the artist’s thoughts and meditation on her relationship with the universe, nature, others and self. Park Daa Won’s bold and decisive strokes have no reservation, leaving little room for compromise. Although it varies - swift or delayed, firm or fluid – the basis in fundamental energy is implied from the tips of her powerful brushstrokes.

Park’s works are not necessarily planned a priori or intended for some formative configuration; rather, her coincidental brush touches aim at some unique forms enabled by some sort of spirituality. Coexistence of contingency and certainty is combined with synchronicity of freedom and control; and these series of events breathe life onto the flat surface, thereby escalating tension throughout the canvas. These are evidence of the artist’s intense efforts to control and manage a given framework.

                             
                        Art oh Dansaekhwa / Now here in Blue 2016 / PARK DAA WON

Inspired by Park Daa won’s body of works, the art community is preparing to spring-off on a new monochrome movement stemming from Dansaekhwa. In 2012, major Korean monochrome artists Lee Ufan, Park Seobo, Ha Chong-Hyun to name a few, participated in a show titled ‘Dansaekhwa: Korean Monochrome Painting (National Museum of Contemporary Art)’ curated by art critic Yoon Jin Sub. In his recent essay for Park Daa Won, Yoon commented, "Through the course of inhaling and exhaling, and by biding with one’s time, Park shows her unique body of works with spontaneous and intuitive lines by summoning all her energy and spirits – an artistic performance and cultural phenomenon worth noting. Park Daa Won’s monochromatic paintings are both the Book of Life and the ultimate medium that reaches for the primitive universal phenomenon. It is clear then, that Park’s “Now Here” series are products of seasoned calligraphic skills stemming from ancient philosophy. What is the trajectory of her brush stroke? Where is the end of its journey? We are left wondering about the next chapter of Park Daa Won’s artistic career."

  Art of Dansaekhwa / Now here  / PARK DAA WON