Rethink Modernity with Jae Young Park’s Woolscape
Clothes making marks the beginning of civilization. At first glance a realistic painting, artist Jae Young Park portrays modernity with a knitting analogy. Strands after strands, which act as a symbolic form of human beings in the wider society, the artist on one hand praises humanity through the process of knitting, on the other hand criticizes the loss of humanity under the materialistic society. Park’s paintings focus on the relationship between individuals and the collective society.
Asking the question of what an individual means to the modern society, Park builds the image with the basic unit of a strand. Similar to how the system of our daily life is constructed, where human beings work as single units, people are all a part of larger picture. The way of how the strands are tied and untied is a metaphor for social relationships. Instead of emphasizing the dark side of modernism, Park suggests the warmth it could create, like how individuals carry their role and contribute to the society, aiming to proceed for a better future.
The artist created a unique genre Woolscape for his own paintings. Literally combining the two words wool and landscape, Park’s artworks stand between the object itself and its implication under a wider context. Embracing the aesthetics of minimalism, the works can also be interpreted as social realistic landscape.
Poloneck consists on a kelly green sweater that wraps around the woman’s body and protects her from the cold wind. The color under a warm lighting, the composition, and the choice of involving a female body part have conveyed a sweetness and warmth for the audience to sit back and enjoy the artwork.
Different from Poloneck, Ribbon does not include explicit body parts to portray the presence of a person. The curves and the power of the knot have sufficiently implied the fact that the knitwear is worn. The subtle presence of human flesh further enhances the abstractness of the painting, which leads the audience to a situational imagination.
The images invite the audience to reach a state of mind which resembles meditation and rethink about humanity through the passage of time.
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