“2023 Young Artist Project Art Lab Daejeon” Installation view at Lee Eungno Museum ©Lee Ungno MuseumFrom May 16 to June 6, the M2 Project Room at the Lee Ungno Museum in Daejeon will host an exhibition by Yonghwa Park (b. 1983), the first of six artists selected for the seventh edition of the ‘2023 Young Artist Project Art Lab Daejeon (Related Links)’. Starting with Park’s work in May, the exhibition will highlight the work of a different artist every month until September.
The artist will present 15 works created since 2020 under the theme of ‘Unable to capture it fully’ The artist’s works in this exhibition feature scenes of zoos. However, animals are not the main characters in the works, but rather the sculptures and artificial spaces used to confine them, such as steel cages, artificial trees, and rocks.
The animals in the works are erased eyes, expressionless faces, and faded desires; they look more like display sculptures on a shelf than living beings. In addition, in some works, ball-shaped forms of disparate colors appear and appear to be objects that exist for people to see and enjoy rather than living beings.
Through the theme of the Zoo the artist expresses on canvas the contradictions and anxiety felt in the unstable space of reality about the unpredictable future and precarious feelings felt in unfamiliar places. In particular, he pays attention to objects trapped in artificial, and her works reflect the disparate feelings she felt when he visited the zoo as an adult after enjoying and frequenting it as a child.
