도시를 탐하다: Park Nung Saeng
In a complex social world, art has long recreated illusions and myths about nature and society in a beautiful way. It has reflected its time through religion, politics, and ideas. It has often idealised reality and sometimes dreamed of an imagined utopia. Today, instead of following grand ideologies, we are turning back to ordinary daily life.
Interest in Western civilisation and art was deeply accepted in Korea, but it was not until the late 1980s that Korean art began to express the industrial mood of its own society. Around this time, new media spread and the boundaries between genres began to fade. In Korean painting, artists experimented in many ways and struggled to express a distinctly Korean feeling. Traditional true-view landscape painting(진경산수화) broke away from Chinese styles and helped create original Korean methods. Today, Korean painting continues to experiment, not only with different media but also with new ways of using ink. Artists produce new results through these efforts. The subjects of artworks now include cities, objects, machines, and virtual images from media. Viewers interpret these images differently depending on their time and place.
Park Nung Saeng presents wide, panoramic landscapes that look almost like illustrated guides. He avoids overly artificial or distorted images. Instead, he shows scenes that feel direct and sensory.
He expresses what we recognise in the world around us. While focusing on clear images, he also leaves empty or abstract spaces that invite personal associations. Shapes, materials, pigments, and colours create strong visual impressions that become symbolic images. What the artist emphasises is the composition of space, where forms are arranged and changed according to his own intention. Depending on where he stands to sketch, he captures forms from different viewpoints and combines them in unusual ways. Through this, he creates his own visual language. His images do not simply copy what the eye sees. They translate the visible world into visual expression.
In his work, cities often look small compared to vast nature. Sometimes the city seems to push into nature, and sometimes green nature surrounds a large city. Nature may appear like a floating island beneath or behind the city, becoming part of a human-made landscape. Where nature has been worn away, concrete walls and steel structures rise. Different elements mix together in the changing city and form a strange harmony. This can feel mysterious. That sense of mystery creates a new relationship with the space around both nature and the city. The artist walks through real places, climbs to high points, and moves among people to sketch from life. He turns unnoticed, anonymous relationships between people and places into art. By stepping back and observing, he addresses social change from a slight distance. Nature and the city are constantly changing. Through this cycle, renewal and rebirth continue. The artist observes these changes and recognises them in his work. Nature and the city exist together and move in a cycle.
When he skillfully uses the energy of ink and the spirit of forms, the vast city in his landscapes hides its sense of excess and excitement. The tangled city blocks blend into the structure of nature and the city. He uses light and dark tones, dry and fine brushwork, red ink and acrylic, spreading and layering on the surface. The material quality of the pigment becomes visible.
In some works, a device pulls the viewer upward, then divides the wide landscape of nature and city vertically. The falling forms connect with the feeling of ink. They move beyond traditional images, yet do not abandon tradition. This reflects the artist’s will to hold on to tradition while seeking innovation and new possibilities.
(Lee Sangho, Gallery Chosun)
Translated by Gallery Chosun