Park Hyung Geun ⓒ지성종 

Park Hyung Geun is an established mid-career photographer who has been exploring themes such as perception and spirituality through a number of his photography series, including The Second Paradise, Tenseless, and Tetrapod since 2000. He is interested in spaces formed after the modern age, the organization of objects within them, and the ways they are perceived. Park continues to develop his oeuvre based on research about modernity, history and stories tied to certain regions and environmental issues.

Park Hyung Geun completed his graduate studies in Visual Arts at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he also studied image and communication. Park has presented his works through 21 solo exhibitions around the world, including Kumho Museum of Art, Space So, and Paola Meliga Gallery in Italy, and participated in more than 170 special group exhibitions at home and abroad, including the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Seoul Museum of Art. He was among the winners of Kumho Young Artist and artist in residency of Photoquai at Musée du Quai Branly in 2006 and 2014, respectively.

Park’s most notable series Tenseless is the result of the artist’s attempt to overcome the limitation of photography, which is often considered “a medium that reproduces the reality” by conveying stories in photographs. He started the series in London around 2003 and has continually expanded the collection over the last two decades. A distinct characteristic of the series is that scenes or images that have been directed or presented a certain way to meet his intentions have been captured in places like parks, forests, or in nature. Regarding Tenseless, renowned photography critic Ian Jeffrey wrote, “Park Hyung Geun’s photographs demonstrate profound insight into objects and their emanations, and they guide us to another dimension.”

Fluidic Topography, which Park plans to present this year, is a work based on topography, the study of the earth’s surface structure and natural environment. The new work focuses on the act of walking, which brings humans into direct physical contact with the ground sculpted and arranged by natural processes of water, fire, wind, and light. Walking along the stream that formed over traces of lava flow in Jeju inspired the artist.

Park says, “The final stop of art is incompletion,” and that he “tries to stay awake at all times while being silently devoted to work.” By this, he means that he has not adhered to a single style, but rather tried out different things, as rigid thinking and banality are alarming for artists. He tells us, “One’s survival as an artist is possible only when their art is alive,” and that “it is important for an artist to face one’s own limitation at all times.”

Recently, Park has been “adopting a multi-perspective approach about thoughts on photography as a medium.” He says that he is, at last, starting to realize what photography really is, now that he has spent enough time as a photographer. Park added, “I am interested in connecting and rearranging various points with photographs. Narrating memories, history, and geology through photographs by combining events in Jeju’s modern and contemporary history with the aesthetic aspect of Jeju’s sceneries can be an example. I want to offer opportunities to reconsider the role and possibility of photography in the contemporary era.”

Park Hyung Geun ⓒ지성종