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Grim Park<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Grim Park overlays his personal narrative onto the traditional format of Korean Buddhist painting. Within the sacred framework of religious iconography, he interweaves his queer identity and lived experiences. The artist has stated that his practice stems from a central question: \u201cIn a society structured by binary frameworks, can genderqueer individuals be accepted equally without discrimination?\u201d By drawing upon tradition to speak to the present, Park forges a new mythology for those relegated to the margins\u2014at the point where past and present collide.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Grim Park earned his BFA in Buddhist Art from Dongguk University. In 2022, he was selected as a finalist for the 22nd Songeun Art Award, and his works have since been added to the collections of major institutions, including the OCI Museum of Art and the Sunpride Foundation. He has held solo exhibitions at THEO, Studio Concrete, etc. Park has also participated in group shows at the Ilmin Museum of Art, OCI Museum of Art, and other key venues, steadily expanding his distinct artistic terrain.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the heart of Park\u2019s practice is a \u2018reinterpretation\u2019 of Buddhist mythology. His signature series, ShimHoDo (The Search for Tiger), reimagines the classic Zen parable SimWooDo (The Search for Ox), which follows a boy\u2019s journey toward enlightenment through the search for an ox. In Park\u2019s version, the ‘ox’ and the ‘boy’ is replaced by a ‘tiger’ and a ‘bodhisattva’, thereby reconfiguring the roles of those who give and receive enlightenment. By doing so, the artist connects the figure of the tiger\u2014excluded from becoming human in the Dangun myth[1]<\/a>\u2014to the marginalized position of queer identity. The labor-intensive process of layering pigments and drawing fine lines on silk becomes, for the artist, both a devotional offering and a meditative act.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The artist describes his practice as \u201cexisting on the threshold between the conservative world of Buddhist painting and the genderqueer community.\u201d His work has been critized to be \u2018profane\u2019 by some, while others have dismissed it as \u2018too traditional to be contemporary art.\u2019 Yet, what sustains his practice, Park says, is the voice of someone who once told him, \u201cMy existence felt a little less strange.\u201d It is for those unnamed individuals\u2014those who dwell on the margins\u2014that he continues to create contemporary icons rooted in spirituality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At this year\u2019s Kiaf, Grim Park presents \u2018Simhodo_Chosen\u2019 alongside his series \u201944 (Sasa)\u2019 where narratives unfold through symbolic objects in the absence of human figures. Reflecting on \u2018Chosen\u2019, Park explains: \u201cBy inverting the traditional meaning of \u2018selection,\u2019 I wanted to recast it as the story of a genderqueer subject who claims the right to choose themselves.\u201d Before Park\u2019s works, viewers are met with an unfamiliar yet striking realization: that enlightenment can arise not apart from, but within the very currents of desire and inner turbulence. By interweaving \u2018sacred\u2019 and the \u2018profane\u2019, his paintings quietly pose a vital question: What might a world look like in which difference is not merely endured, but allowed to exist together?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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