인온(絪縕)_상서로운 기운: Pilhyun Park
Text by Ha Kye Hoon (Art Critic)
Translated by Gallery Chosun
Through a long period of creation, Park Pilhyun has reflected on the roots of abstraction and form while continuing experiments with materials. In this body of work, she finds a starting point by layering a mixture of animal glue, white pigment and water onto traditional Korean paper. This method becomes a crucial foundation for defining the relationship between the artist and the surface.
In most cases, an artist begins with a surface treated as a background for a central motif, lightly primed before drawing begins, or the image is developed directly without drawing. By contrast, Park approaches the surface itself as the point of departure, engaging with it more deeply before any image emerges.
In this process, thought comes first. As the work begins, she repeats the act of applying multiple layers of white pigment to the surface. She describes this reputation as an act of building up. Through layering pigment and water, the image on the surface gradually fades and disappears, yet at the same time leads to a new process of formation.
Park’s repeated layering of pigment on the surface goes beyond mere physical labour; it plays a significant role in shaping the inspiration, mental attitude, and creative direction that accompany her work. Repetition serves as a way to approach certainty and drive toward completion. It also focuses the mind, generating energy and momentum from within. In this sense, the placement of repetitive acts or chants at the beginning of certain religious rituals can be understood as a similar process.
For park, the starting point of her work is this gradual emergence of motifs through repetition; a layered, contemplative gaze. Through repetition, she brings the images in her mind into clearer form, while simultaneously making her inner visions, the substance of thought and emotion, more present within her own space.
French art critic Yves Michaux once observed that in the work of the Chinese-born painter Zao Wou-Ki, space serves both as a physical surface and as an imaginative, mental space. He likened the artist’s brush intervening in this space to a gentle ripple spreading outward in a still pond, where a small touch creates concentric waves. In Park’s work, repetition similarly transforms the surface into a contemplative space where image and thought converge.
Park Pilhyun also uses her layered surfaces to enter a state of calm, intervening with her brush to create subtle waves across the space. In this moment, she reflects inwardly, attempting to discover aspects of herself. By taking advantage of the absorbent quality of hanji paper, she not only builds up pigment but also generates a permeating, layered space, imbuing her creative process with contemplative energy.
Technically, she enriches the visual texture of her surfaces by allowing tiny droplets of pigment to scatter from the brush onto the layered white pigment, producing a nuanced interplay of depth and surface. The resulting works are formally meticulous, yet they invite meditation and guide the viewer toward stillness. Within this framework, she reaches a state of inward attention that transcends individual images or the immediate atmosphere of the painting.
The works on display immediately draw the viewer into a misty space, where the silhouettes of trees emerge like fleeting forms, guiding our gaze and breathing. Moving through this space, following the slow drift of air as if it were thick fog, evokes a sense of anticipation and tension, as though one might encounter a subtle, almost spiritual presence in an unknown place.
Approaching the works more closely, however, reveals abstract surfaces that resist easy recognition, challenging the viewer’s initial visual impressions. The layered pigment, the accumulation of time, and the delicate traces of droplets settling on the white pigment surface converge to create a space for reflection and contemplation.
These pieces continue Park Pilhyun’s long exploration of material and form, where the interplay of glue and white pigment produces simultaneous processes of disappearance and emergence. Through these surfaces, she generates imagery and mental space that invite meditative engagement, offering insight into her creative process at a mature and profound stage. Formally, the works demonstrate meticulous craftsmanship, while thematically they embody the concentrated, unified energy, referred to in her notes as 인온 Inon (絪縕), where the forces of sky and earth, or yin and yang, coalesce without dispersing. Seen in this light, these works mark a significant step forward in Park Pilhyun’s artistic development, elevating her practice to a new dimension.