PARK Jongkyu

PARK presents “Maze of Onlookers,” the most significant series among his recent works of art. The installation art of CCTV images broadcast in a sculptural structure reflects the structural issues of modern society characterized by the random mass exposure and surveillance in an intertwined and ambivalent manner, leading audiences to visually experience the very complicated and risky relationship between them.
The issue of a surveillance society has been an important issue for specific to political sociologists and is also a main concern to many artists at home and abroad.
The CCTV originally intended to prevent crimes and protect citizens has now expanded to include surveillance on workers and invaded the privacy of every corner of society and threatens to suffocate human rights with its dense web of networked surveillance systems. This perversion of the original intent and purpose of CCTV cameras and its further ambivalence of a surveillance society is a depressing and dreary prospect for any thinking person.
Many artists share this dread and have created works of CCTV themed art to sound an urgent alarm. Quite famously, Ai Weiwei (1958~, China) has created a piece of marble CCTV sculpture. Closer to home, Inhwan Oh (1965~, Korea) has raised a metaphorical question about remaining blind spots in the art world in his installation of CCTV cameras installed in the exhibition rooms at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea.
In contrast to these artists, PARK’s CCTV works are more straightforward and philosophical.
First, PARK’s CCTV images are used not merely to represent or symbolize social surveillance and control but more to shed light on the contemporary settings of our life for the purpose of vicarious experiences. He does not just report on the risks of the surveillance society, but also guides the audiences to audio-visually and synesthetically experience the ambiguous reality where the mass exposure and surveillance bears complicated structures beyond our imagination, where the distinction between protection and surveillance becomes blurred, and where the random voyeurism spreads among individuals consuming such images.
A total of 18 TV monitors and screens are comprised of four parts. While 7 monitors show the audiences captured by the CCTV cameras installed in the exhibition space, 5 monitors deliver both real-time and time-lagged CCTV images. Another 6 monitors present the images of phenomena in society surrounding us up to a 12x speed. The other 4 units carry the overall images projected onto the entire structure and the rest of the screens.
It would be problematic if one felt unfamiliar or very familiar with the real-time and time-lagged images of audiences captured on CCTV. Upon encountering an avalanche of CCTV images captured unknowingly anytime anywhere, some may be overwhelmed by fear and anxiety over the strangeness and unfamiliarity of a surveillance society. Others may feel accustomed to appearing as objects in CCTV images and take it as naturally as a selfie, a part of modern life’s vanity.
Second, PARK leads the audiences to ponder upon one important philosophical question. The audiences captured by the camera are supposed to simultaneously watch both real-time and time-lagged images. The existential and phenomenological experience of seeing oneself as objects of the past and present at the same time may raise questions about time, leading one to ask serious philosophical questions.
“Maze of Onlookers,” Park’s new series of installed images, paintings and sculptures to be displayed at the exhibit, may have different implications for different viewers. From a broad perspective, some viewers may find all these works installed to serve as the background for the “Maze of Onlookers” from a broad perspective. Yet, the images shown on the first floor and those projected onto the large electronic display on the underground floor are full of power and strength in terms of both concepts and imageries. The lines and dots in PARK’s paintings created by modifying pixels, which are extended to the sculptures and images, may be viewed as the abstracted representations of our surroundings against the backdrop of inundating images and information. Although concrete forms vanish because of the modified pixels, PARK’s abstract works conceptualize the images passed and passing. The images to be displayed on the first floor are the data of mobile phone numbers projected onto a convex screen, visualizing the meaning of phone numbers as the core codes and new identities overriding the resident registration numbers and connecting our daily relationships.
If this exhibition makes the audiences feel confused and even dizzy or dazed, the artist’s intention will hit the bull’s eye as he has created his works to have the audiences experience a world of matrices akin to a flabbergasting multi-layered and intertwined maze where creatures both actively and passively see, surveil and indulge in one another with no way out.
Leeahn Gallery Seoul <J.PARK 2016 MAZE>展 Preface
CHOI Jinhee, Curator

PARK, Jongkyu
Born in 1966, Daegu, Korea

EDUCATION
1996 Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Poste Diplome, Paris, France
1995 Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Paris, France

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION
2016 J.PARK 2016, MAZE, LEEAHN Gellery, Seoul, Korea
2015 J.PARK 2015 ENCODING, Cyan Museum, Yeongcheon, Korea
2014 Layers & Demensions, Space the River, Jinju, Korea
2012 Memory Craft(Layers, Dimensions), Bongsan Cultural Center, Daegu, Korea
2012 Layers & Dimensions, Gallery Bundo, daegu, Korea
2011 Layers & Dimensions, Kunstdoc , seoul, Korea
2011 Layers & Dimensions, TUVRhienland, Seoul, Korea
2009 LAYERS & DIMENSIONS, BIBI Space, Daejeon, Korea
2009 LAYERS & DIMENSIONS, Gallery Shilla, Daegu, Korea
2008 Gallery Kawafune, Tokyo, Japan

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2016 Changwon International Sculpture Biennial, Changwon, Korea
2016 Special Exhibition for Celebrating the 130th Anniversary of Korea-France Diplomatic Relations, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeonggido, Korea
2016 EXTENSION.KR, Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2016 EXTENSION.KR, National Centre of the Contemporary Art, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
2013 Mart–Art, Gwanhoon Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2013 The 4th International Contemporary Art Gwangju Art- Vision Exhibition, Gwangju Biennale, Korea
2012 Daegu Contemporary Art Festival of Gangjung, Korea
2011 Made in Daegu, Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, Korea
2011 Kunstdoc Artist Cluster, Kunstdoc, Seoul, Korea
2011 Summer Drawing Festival, Kunstdoc, Seoul, Korea