The White Way: Jieun Park

Jieun Park is an artist who paints city nightscapes with intense Chinese ink brushstroke. Her work depicts a night view of a city implicitly and meticulously camouflaged under a black ink plane. Her night city landscape paintings are of Seoul, New York, Paris, and Singapore, which reveal their identities through landmarks. As can be inferred here, travel is an important source of inspiration for the artist; Park's canvas contains the scenery, moment, and atmosphere she encountered during her travels. Her realistic depiction of night scenery within the intense frame of black ink makes the viewer feel the fleeting movement as if seeing an afterimage. And this energy allows the viewer to feel the momentary feeling of travel as if it were directly experienced or drawn from the other side of memory.

Jieun Park’s main medium is changing emotions. Bewildered by the staggering speed at which the world changes, Park tries to take a step back and contemplate the world, choosing travel as a means of contemplation. As she traveled the world anonymously, she felt various changes in her emotional state. And in the whirlpool of emotions, the artist found comfort in buildings, landscapes, roofs, and lights of the unchanging tacit night found in all corners of the world.

“The White Way” pays attention to conflicting emotional states among the various emotions the artist has explored through her works. from filling up to emptiness and loneliness to ecstasy, Park expresses this contrast in her city nightscapes, inspired by the highs and lows of emotions. Hence, the title of her solo exhibition was taken from a term referring to a metropolis that is as bright as day even in the middle of the night. – a state as paradoxical as what Park delicately depicts. Within her seemingly bold strokes of black ink lie the lights that embroidered the nighttime. It is night, but it is as bright as day; it is time to go to bed, but the night is still lively with the lights on and people still gathering. The fact that the scenery of a cold and lonely night would not be complete without the people inside and their warm lights is another element of contrast inherent in this exhibition.

Jieun Park's works are colorful stories in which boldness and meticulousness, coldness and warmth, and stillness and vitality coexist. And the aesthetics of contrast such as Park's work will never cease to fascinate the audience.