Installation view of 《Weather Becoming》 ©Pipe Gallery
Pipe
Gallery presents a solo exhibition 《Weather Becoming》 by artist Eunjung Park, on view through February 14.
Park has
consistently explored how fundamental human affect may be articulated through
painting, and her practice begins with what she describes as “the process of
visualizing affect.” The exhibition title 《Weather
Becoming》 is derived from the phrase “under the
weather,” which originated from the experience of Western sailors retreating
below deck to escape storms or harsh conditions at sea.
Literally
meaning to be affected by weather, the phrase also implies a disturbance in
bodily and mental balance, encouraging weather to be understood as an external
force that modulates bodily states and conditions.
Installation view of 《Weather Becoming》 ©Pipe Gallery
Within this context, Park accumulates on
the canvas sensations shaped by a diasporic life, the physical and
psychological disorientation caused by repeated long-distance travel and time
differences, and the fundamental bodily experience of childbirth. Rather than
converging into a fixed identity or narrative representation, these sensations
are inscribed on the surface as rhythms of unstable transition and adaptation.
Through repetition, layering, erasure, and
overwriting, color and form emerge as visual manifestations of affect in
motion, composing a fictional yet ecological space in which environmental,
biological, and emotional factors coalesce.
Installation view of 《Weather Becoming》 ©Pipe Gallery
In this
way, Park’s painting does not seek to reproduce abstract landscapes of emotion.
Rather, it constitutes a field of thought that investigates the process through
which affect and memory, environmental context, and bodily condition
intertwine, disassemble, and recombine—tracing the formation and transformation
of existence as a state.
Ultimately,
Park’s work may be understood as an attempt to render the climate of affect,
revealing how existence is continuously re-formed and attuned within
ever-shifting conditions. If, standing before the works, a viewer experiences a
subtle wavering of body and affect that comes into contact with deeply embedded
layers of memory, that sensation marks the world Park proposes, and the point
at which painterly temporality is realized.
