평범한실패: Park Jihye
On Park Jihye’s Solo Exhibition 《평범한 실패》
Jang Jintaeg (Independent Curator)
Through her work, Park Jihye confronts social systems that operate without question and consistently raises fundamental doubts about the so-called “rational” forms of understanding and standards that sustain them.
What is the truth behind the objective frameworks the world demands; rationality, satisfaction, happiness, success? Do these ideas hold any meaning beyond the will of the majority to reach consensus in the name of collective stability? History has already shown that no such thing as absolute truth exists, yet society has also grown adept at quietly blocking the possibility of radical change or resistance that such realisations might provoke.
Individuals form groups to protect their own interests, and these groups build large structures to secure themselves. When someone confronts these structures head-on, we have often seen how quickly the collective eliminates or expels what it deems heretical. Still, individuals retain the freedom to make their own choices, and the basis of those choices emerges from a balance between objectivity and subjectivity.
Beyond ideas such as rationality, satisfaction, happiness, and success, so-called positive standards like normality, completion, and the general norm may easily draw us in, but they can never function as lasting or absolute truths. For this reason, it is necessary at times to reconsider the visible value of opposing concepts that are seen as negative or incorrect, such as irrationality, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, failure, abnormality, incompletion, and exception.
Park Jihye’s work illuminates the many layers of reality that lie between areas deemed uncomfortable or unnecessary and the values accepted by society at large. In doing so, her work seems to free our internal systems from fixed, binary ways of thinking. This approach leads naturally to an examination of contradictory situations, such as the irrationality that inevitably emerges from the pursuit of rationality, or the unclear outcomes that always appear at its end. This attitude can also be sensed in the works themselves and in the titles of her exhibitions.
Through the exhibition 《평범한 실패》(Gallery Chosun, 2018), Park sows seeds of rational doubt drawn from the contradictions of everyday life onto the surface of established standards. In this exhibition, she questions blind trust, challenges the idea of absolute fairness, disrupts the self-protective mechanisms built into social structures, and argues that completion is a myth.
Rather than stopping at doubt toward the ordinary conditions and norms she encounters, Park clearly articulates her own position. This appears as an attempt to form new generalizations from her accumulated experiences, and also as an active effort to share these questions with others.
Park Jihye’s work does not seek to overthrow rigid, and at times oppressive, systems, nor does it attempt to provoke a new discourse. Instead, it introduces a subtle shift, a different frequency that gently unsettles their demands. Her gaze invites viewers to truly look at the contemporary condition stranded between the two extremes: unconditional obedience and outright rejection.
Through her work, we may find a rare chance to acknowledge the natural drift of our own lives, moments when we are carried along and moments when we try to resist.