PARK SUK WON Korean, b. 1942

Park Suk Won (b.1942) is a leading figure in the history of Korean contemporary sculpture. As a part of a founding member of the Korean Avant-Garde Group (AG, 1969-1975), he participated in the 5^th Paris Biennale (1966) and the 10^th Sao Paulo Biennale (1969). His works are held in the collections of prominent museums, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA, Korea), Daegu Art Museum (Korea), and Walkerhill Museum, among others.

Park Suk Won’s Accumulation series is an examination of the potentiality of an oeuvre, hence seeking harmony between men and nature. Throughout the Accumulation series from the 1980s, employing the method of “abstract-cutting” and “accumulation,” he has prominently worked with nature-based materials such as stones and wood.

“Park’s painterly construction of Korean paper and graphite is woven from the depths of our subconsciousness—unbeknownst to us—forcing us to realize the importance of self-observation, which we can hear clearly, and making the conceptual thinking of the material feel as light as possible, thus guiding us from the passivity of perception to the independence of active thinking. Moreover, it defies conventional material categorization of value and opens up the deepest human consciousness, allowing us to feel alive, going beyond the realm of time.” (Park Suk Won: Re- and De-, Yongdae Kim)

The core concepts of “accumulation” and “repetition” also expand in Park Suk Won’s two-dimensional works. Embracing the tendency of natural resources or materials, he aggregates the Korean traditional paper, “Hanji,” vertically and horizontally on a canvas. Through the practice of repetition and re-assembly, he once again underlines the value of the pure properties of materials while expanding his philosophy to two-dimensional paintings.