MeeNa Park (b. 1973) has persistently explored the production, distribution, and consumption methods and environments related to color and form, which are fundamental elements of painting. Over the past 20 years, she has collected commercially available paints and widely used patterns, using them as part of a system to create her own distinctive paintings.

MeeNa Park’s work begins with a focus on color. Her early piece Autumn Sky (1995) involved using commercially available paint to replicate the colors she perceived in the sky as closely as possible. To achieve this, she recorded the color of the sky from the same place and at the same time every day for a month, translating these observations onto her palette.

Since 1998, Park has become interested in children’s coloring books designed for learning. Moving away from the conventional approach of filling in shapes outlined on paper, she developed her own set of rules for applying color. Her Coloring Exercise drawings series (1998–) involves collecting and categorizing coloring books from various publishers featuring common icons like the moon or sun, isolating these icons, and filling them with color in her unique style.

In her 2013 coloring book work 12 Colors Drawings II, Park used learning coloring papers featuring motifs of the sun, moon, and stars, filling them with systematic patterns using 12-color sets of colored pencils or mass-produced pencils from various companies. This work explores the relationships between theme, form, and color, showcasing the color spectrum of 12 basic colors along with black and gray.

Later, Park presented Orange Painting (2002-2003), a work that involved collecting and researching all orange-toned paints available on the market. She gathered these orange paints sold nationwide, organized them by manufacturer, and painted them in uniform, horizontal lines on the canvas.

The top of the filled canvas resembles a monochromatic painting with a horizontal structure, while the bottom features an outline of a sofa, evoking the image of a painting hung in a domestic interior behind a couch.

The artist's interest in commercially available colors extended beyond paint. In the 2005 group exhibition “Cosmo Cosmetic” at the Coreana Museum of Art, Park presented a work that involved collecting and cataloging various colors found in cosmetics on paper.

She gathered all the lipsticks and eyeshadows produced and distributed by Coreana at that time, organizing them by color and name. This "color collection" project reflects a meticulous and detailed process of researching, collecting, and analyzing all the colors experienced in everyday life, where the artist’s personal subjectivity is minimized, and only a symbolic system of color representation remains.

In her solo exhibition “Home Sweet Home” at Project Space Sarubia in 2007, Park introduced her Dingbat Paintings series, exploring the relationship between image and language.

Dingbats are a form of communication using simple images, icons, or symbols rather than standard characters like the alphabet or Hangeul. When a dingbat font is typed on a computer, it generates designated images instead of letters, creating a unique system of visual representation.

This work, which introduces dingbat fonts as image-characters into a new pictorial language, combines specific dingbat images and special fonts according to complex information, presenting them in a simplified, symbolized format.

In Dingbat Paintings, images as symbols are arranged and juxtaposed on the canvas, allowing for various interpretations depending on the user’s intent or context. This reflects a facet of contemporary visual culture, where the relationship between signifier and signified is formed arbitrarily.

Another of MeeNa Park's notable works, the Scream series (2001–2019), examines arrangements and computations of color, form, content, and structure based on icons and themes, revealing the industrial order of paint itself. The series uses a cartoonish image of a figure seemingly screaming with an exposed uvula as its basic framework, varying the combinations of color and form.

Unlike MeeNa Park's previous systematic and objective works, the Scream series is an exceptional piece in which the artist's personal narrative is subtly embedded. For each artwork, she envisions a different story and diversifies the colors and forms, yet the specific content of these stories remains largely undisclosed.

Park compares Scream to a fugue in music, where a theme is repeated at varying pitches; similarly, Scream continuously develops specific elements, adding layers of meaning and narrative.

Since 2006, MeeNa Park has extended her work of collecting, classifying, and documenting colors from the Orange Painting series to include black, a neutral color unlike orange. Following her established method, she gathered all commercially available black pens and oil paints and organized them according to specific rules.

For instance, 2014-Black (2014) involved collecting black oil paints on the market and filling each of 55 canvases, each measuring 27.3 x 27.3 cm, allowing for a comparison and contrast between shades of black.

Black Pens (2006-2014) is a drawing series made with black ballpoint pens from various manufacturers, featuring repeated lines on A4 paper at consistent intervals. Each of the 498 drawings is labeled with the pen's brand and unique identifier at the bottom, which the artist catalogs separately. This work reveals not only differences in color but also variations in texture due to the materials and thickness of the pen tips.

According to the artist, when learning painting, they were taught to avoid using black paint, which is typically categorized as a neutral color, and instead create and use various shades by mixing different oil paints. This means that black, made by blending various oil colors, will produce different shades of black depending on the colors and proportions used. The artist's work challenges our preconceived notions of black, which we have traditionally perceived as simply a neutral color.

In this way, Park's work may initially appear as simple abstract painting with prominent graphic elements, but by recording facets of reality in the form of color and product shapes, she presents a new perspective on discerning the structure of social and cultural systems. The artist's methodology is regarded as a new critical alternative to the form of painting, as well as a sociological research of contemporary society.

“You need to know what the scope or rules are so you can choose whether to keep them or break them.” (MeeNa Park, Artist’s Note)

MeeNa Park had her first solo exhibition at the Banson Hall Gallery in 1996 and made her debut in the Korean art world with the group exhibition “Relay Relay” at Insa Art Space in 2000. She held her first solo exhibition at Seoul Auction House in 2002, the year she started making her name as the 4th artist of Ssamzie Space Residency.

Her recent solo exhibitions are including “Black” (Perigee Gallery, 2024), “House” (ONE AND J. Gallery, 2023), “Nine Colors & Nine Furniture” (Atelier Hermès, 2023), “Why rain drop overlapped blue faces golden bear at the circus?” (Audio Visual Pavilion, 2022), and more.

Park has also participated in numerous domestic and international group exhibitions at Seoul Museum of Art, Kumho Museum of Art, PLATEAU Samsung Museum of Art, Gwangju Design Biennale, DOOSAN Gallery (New York, USA), International Center for Contemporary Art (Rome, Italy), etc. Her works are in the collections of Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Ilmin Museum of Art, and more.

References

• K-ARTIST.COM, 박미나 (K-ARTIST.COM, Park Meena)
• 국제갤러리, Grey & 12 (Kukje Gallery, Grey & 12)
• 아뜰리에 에르메스, 아홉 개의 색, 아홉 개의 가구 (Atelier Hermès, Nine Colors & Nine Furniture)
• 두산아트센터, Gray Sky (DOOSAN Art Center, Gray Sky)
• 프로젝트 스페이스 사루비아, 홈 스위트 홈 (Project Space Sarubia, Home Sweet Home)
• 페리지갤러리, 검은 (Perigee Gallery, Black)